Days two and three in Kuala Lumpur

So I've been busy wrapping up last minute things at work and finishing final presentations, but hopefully I'll be able to write about the rest of my time in Kuala Lumpur!

Our second day in Kuala Lumpur (July 25), we decided to buy tickets to a Hop on, Hop off bus, which basically took us around the city to all the major areas, which was nice because the normal metro doesn't go to the area of town with the Botanical Gardens. So first things in the morning, we went to the the National Palace. Unfortunately, the palace isn't open to tourists, but we were still able to get some pictures outside with the guards (which we decided looked similar to the ones in London!)

Afterwards, we went to the National Monument on our way to the Botanical Gardens. The monument was very large, but very beautiful none the less.

The Botanical Gardens were beautiful and we ended up wandering around them for about an hour. There were tons of tropical flowers, tall palm trees, and many small lakes and rivers. There was also a beautiful house that I decided I will need to model my future home after (with a garden like I saw in the Orchid Gardens...see below).

After wandering around the gardens, we went to the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park, which is the largest free-flight walk-in aviary. So, basically, as soon as we walked in, there were tons of birds walking and flying around everywhere, which was cool because you could get really close to them (and they didn't seem afraid of people at all). My favorites were a tucan and a hornbill.

After the bird park, we decided to go across the street and walk through the Orchid Garden while we waited for our bus. Once again, there were TONS of tropical flowers in every color imaginable.

After (a late) lunch, we stopped by the National Theater, which reminded us both of the Sydney Opera House in Australia. It was nice, but slightly strange, to see different parts of many different cultures combined together to form what is now Malaysia.

Finally, we went to the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur. Of course, because I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and my hair was showing, I had to wear this (very hot!) robe to go inside. I officially have a new appreciation of Muslim women who have to wear these sorts of things everyday in the heat!

The mosque was very beautiful. We weren't allowed to go into the main prayer area, but we were able to walk around the rest of the building, which was open to the outside (the walls formed more of a tent over the area)...only on the equator! I would like to see them try and build a church with open walls in Michigan!

The nest day (July 26), we had to get up super early to get in line to get tickets to go to the sky-bridge of the Petronas Towers. They only let about 1000 people up each day and, after we had talked to a few people, we found out you had to be in line by at least 8 am to get tickets. To be safe, we got there around 7am and there were already about 250 people in line! We finally got our tickets around 9ish and then wandered around the downtown area for a couple of hours before we could go up to the sky-bridge at 1pm. So, with the rest of our morning we saw the KL Tower, walked around the mall at the base of the Petronas Towers, ate lunch, and I got this delicious milkshake from a place called the Milkshake Factory...they should bring these to the US!

Once it was finally our turn to go up to the sky-bridge, the view was amazing! We spent a little time at the top taking pictures and enjoying the view before heading down and exploring the city for the rest of the afternoon because we were slightly tired after getting up early.

We did a little bit of shopping in China Town and at this huge market in the center of the city. After it got dark, we got one last view of the Petronas Towers at night, swore to come back one day, and then headed to our hotel for the night.

As soon as we got back, however, we got an email from Angela (who was suppose to fly to Thailand with Marcus and meet us in Bangkok) saying that she wasn't able to board the plane because (as a Chinese citizen), she didn't have the correct visa! We're still not sure exactly what happened, but basically an airline employee told her she needed a visa in advanced or a group of at least 9 people to get visas on arrival. However, when she called the Chinese embassy, they told her that she didn't need a visa and should not have been denied boarding the plane! Needless to say, it was a very stressful night trying to contact Angela and Marcus (who's flight was delayed and was suppose to meet us at the hotel...we were praying he made it to Thailand because this was his first time traveling abroad), send emails to our hotel, etc. So, after 5 hours of sleep or so, we left Kuala Lumpur to head to the airport for our next destination: Bangkok, Thailand!

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia!!!

So, I'm officially back in Beijing after my week-long trip around South-East Asia, which including Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and three cities in Thailand, Bangkok, Ayutthaya, and Kanchanaburi. PJ and I traveled to Malaysia together first and then Marcus flew in to meet us in Thailand halfway through our trip. Angela was suppose to come, but she had visa issues at the airport (because she's a Chinese citizen) and they wouldn't let her board the plane. I'll see how much I can include in this post about my time in Malaysia!


Malaysia is, honestly, one of the most amazing places I've ever visited. Although it doesn't have the cultural aspects that cities in Thailand have, everyone one there is very friendly and willing to help and give directions. In addition, English is an official language in Malaysia, which made communicating a lot easier than in Beijing! A couple of other important things to note about Malaysia (in my opinion): Malaysia was once a British Colony, so people drive on the left side of the road (takes a while to get used to!) and over 60% of the population is Muslim. It was nice to actually see religion around the city everyday as compared to China, where religion is rarely ever given a thought, except in some of the major temples. Also, it doesn't hurt that Malaysia is right next to the equator. Can you say warm weather year long and delicious tropical fruits???


The first day in Kuala Lumpur, PJ and I went first in the morning to the Batu Caves, a large Hindu shrine on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. 

Of course, like all cool things in the world, we needed to climb to the top. On the way up to the top of the 272 step staircase, we ran into a bunch of monkeys hanging out and looking for food! 

The inside of the cave was very pretty and natural, a nice change from the urban settings of Beijing.


After seeing the cave, we wandered around the city for a while and spent a little while in Little India (Brickfields). The entire area was very colorful and beautiful. Not to mention that we bought some delicious Indian food and some amazing Indiana desserts, which were very bright colors and tasted like pistachios.

When we were exploring the city, we also stumbled upon Sri Mahamariamman Temple (still not sure how to pronounce that...). 

We also went to Merdeka Square, which was in the middle of the city and a nice place to walk around. Then, we found this large market where we walked around for a while before heading to the downtown area of Kuala Lumpur, KL Sentral. Of course, when we were in Kuala Lumpur, we had to see the Petronas Towers, the tallest twin buildings in the world.

Finally, for the evening, we FINALLY saw Harry Potter, part 2, since the movie is still not out in China (there's a long explanation why but, basically, the Chinese government is postponing the release of all summer blockbusters until a Chinese movie about the formation of the communist party sells a TON of tickets - half a billion, I believe). Either way, the movie was amazing, even though I know I'm about 3 weeks late saying this :)

Last Full Weekend in Beijing!

It's hard to believe how time has flown by here in China this summer. Currently, I'm blogging from one of the coolest places I've ever been to: Malaysia (think mix of down-town New York, the history of Europe, and the nature and palm trees from Hawaii/some Caribbean Island). But more on that later.

Last weekend (July 15th through 17th), was my last full weekend in Beijing because this weekend I am in Malaysia, next weekend I will be in Thailand, and the weekend after that I come home. So, we decided we needed to see everything in Beijing that we had put off, which was basically four things.

First, we all decided that, since we were in Beijing, we needed to see a traditional Chinese Acrobats show. It was an evening show that last a little over an hour and was amazing! The performers definitely know how to impress and audience and keep them entertained. Here is a highlight of some of the acts:

There was a very cool act where the performer stacked a bunch of chairs on top of one another and then did handstands on the top of them. We thought it was impressive when the guy was using four chairs:

But, he kept going and eventually got up to eight chairs!

Other cool acts that they did were one where the performers juggled balls with their feet:

and one where a bunch of people balanced on a bicycle:

Another place we had wanted to visit in Beijing for a while was the 798 Art District (a modern art district). We weren't allowed to take pictures inside any of the studios, but the outside exhibits were still very cool to see. My favorite was a bunch of objects made out of bricks, including an iron, a can of tuna, and a car!

Another place that we had been wanting to see in Beijing since the beginning of the summer was the White Pagoda Temple, which is by the Forbidden City.

It was a giant park and, on top of a hill (of course!), was a giant temple to Buddha. On the way to see the temple, there was an area where people wrote their prayers on wooden squares and then hung them all over the place, which was very pretty.

Once we got to the top, we quickly snapped some pictures and left because it was beginning to rain, and being on top of the tallest hill in the city during a thunder-storm did not seem like the best idea! Fortunately, we did have enough time to see the view of the Forbidden City from the temple and look inside the temple, which was very simple. There were also a bunch of incense sticks laying out, but none of them were lit, which I didn't completely understand. Finally, the outside of the temple was covered in these little carvings of Buddha. Most of the statues, however, were worn down in some places because it seemed like everyone who was walking by had to touch every Buddha!

The last item on our list of things to see in Beijing was the Night Market, which we went to on Monday night (July 18th). The Night Market, which is located in the middle of the city, is a VERY popular and packed tourist destination, mainly because of the strange street food you can buy from the vendors, including (prepare yourself) starfish, scorpions (which were still moving on the stick....grossed me out!!!), seahorses, spiders, lizards, and more. If you want to be grossed out, pictures are below:

We decided that the only people who would be dumb enough to eat those things are probably the Frat-Boy type who need to prove their manly-hood, or something. I ended up going for the safer, normal food: some pork dumplings and grapes on a stick that were dipped in a caramel-like coating - delicious!

That's the last of the main things that we saw in Beijing during our last weekend. I'll update soon with information about my trip to Malaysia (probably a couple of posts!). All you need to know now is: I've officially picked out the house I will be living in when I move here! It's so amazing!

Update on the last few weekends

Sorry I haven't posted in a while! I've been busy at work, exploring Beijing, and planning our week in Malaysia/Thailand! So, here's what we've been up to the last couple of weekends:

On July 2nd, we explored around town during the day and didn't find a whole lot of things. That evening, however, we decided to go back to the Olympic Stadium because the last time we went, we lest before we could see everything lit up. The Stadium definitely had a different feeling during the night and it was very pretty!

The funniest part of the evening was when PJ and I were trying to get a picture of the Water Cuba lit up with a bunch of different colors, like you see on all the official Beijing Olympic pictures (see below). However, the Water Cube changes colors throughout the night and it seemed to repeat every 30 minutes or so. So we were waiting for the Water Cube to change colors to the one we wanted and then some Chinese people came up to us asking for our picture (not an uncommon occurrence). As soon as they came up to us, the Water Cube changed colors and we were trying to tell the people that we had been waiting for 15 minutes and had to get a picture! I don't think they entirely understood, but we got a couple of pictures and the Chinese tourist got a picture with us, so all ended well!

The next day (Sunday, July 3rd), a couple of us went to the Beijing Zoo. After wandering around to find the zoo (which you wouldn't think would be that hard, but it was...), we finally found it and the first area we went to was the pandas! It wasn't a huge surprise, but all but one of the pandas were sleeping....and the other was eating bamboo. They were still very cool to see.

They also had an area with red pandas, which are a lot smaller than the Giant Pandas (shocker, I know), but still cute.

After seeing the pandas, we explored the rest of the zoo. Although the panda area of the zoo was large enough for the animals and well kempt, the rest of the zoo was almost the complete opposite. Many of the animals were in really small cages that were dirty and filled with litter. We figured it was like this because of the limited amount of space in Beijing and because the entrance ticket was only 15 RMB = less than $2.50 (seeing the pandas was extra).

Last Saturday (July 9th), I went to a couple of small places a few metro stops away: the 5-Pagoda Temple and the Purple Bamboo Garden. The 5-Pagoda Temple (Zhenjue Temple) was a smaller, Buddhist Temple built in an Indian style, as opposed to the traditional Chinese style. It was a very quite place to walk around and explore because it's not a traditional "tourist destination" in Beijing.

Around the temple, there was also a museum of stone carvings, which included a lot of large statues and old tomb-stones, including a bunch from Jesuits, which was slightly surprising.

After seeing the Temple, we wandered around the Purple Bamboo Park, which was a short walk away. 

The park was very pretty and, once again, was not a tourist place; there were just a bunch of locals walking around, taking pictures, practicing tae kwon do, and more.

Finally, on Sunday (July 10th), one of PJ's friends who is currently working in Tianjin (30 minute train ride away) was visiting for the weekend so we went around with him for the day. I also found a place at the Pearl Market to buy cheap, but very good quality, knock-off Coach bags, so you can believe I'll be bringing a few of those home with me!

You know you live in Beijing when...

After about six weeks here in Beijing, there are a lot of things that are completely different from in the US. Here's a list I've come up with about the important differences between Beijing and Michigan.

Transportation

-People ride on the back of bikes.

-Cars don't know what brakes and turn signals are. If you don't look both ways at least 10 times before you cross the street (even if you have a green light at a cross-walk), there is a good chance you may die. And I'm not exaggerating, although I haven't yet seen an accident.

-The metro system is a God-sent. You can go anywhere in the city for 2 RMB (30 cents)

-Almost every restaurant delivers. Including McDonald's and KFC. And people say Americans are lazy!

-I've seen almost everything being transported on the back of a bike, including water, fruit, flowers, entire families (I saw one bike with the two parents, two kids, and a dog), and more.

Eating
-Fancier restaurants all serve food in a family style manner. All the food is placed on a rotating glass stand on top of the table and then you just take whatever you want with your chopsticks.

-Pig's ear is disgusting. Don't try it. (and for the record, I thought it was gross before I was told what it was)

-Almost all snacks/cookies come in a wide variety of flavors. Take oreos for example: forget vanilla filling. Try mango&orange, green tea ice cream, blueberry& raspberry, and more! The same goes for Chips Ahoy. Orange Chips Ahoy cookies are my favorite so far!

-There are a ton of different types of juices here, including coconut juice, watermelon juice (yum!), plum juice, and more!

Entertainment
-Movies can be bought for $2, and books for $1 to $2, depending on the length of the book.

-Clubs here play a lot of Spanish and European music, which I was not expecting!

-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 doesn't come out in China until August!!! Oh the horror! Because it comes out in Hong Kong on July 14th (like the rest of the world...), we think it has to do with some Chinese law.

Clothing and Shopping

-The women here in China will go to any length to ensure that they are pale because tan skin is a sign of a poor farmer. This includes: wearing socks with sandals, always carrying a parasol (even if it's cloudy out), wearing what look like leg warmers, but for the arms, and (in some extra cases) wearing face visors to prevent the face from becoming tan. On of the graduate students in my lab couldn't understand why Americans like to tan, and trying to explain it to her was nearly impossible!

-Chinese clothes are tiny! I went to a clothing store the other day and all the pants were skinny and size 4 or less.

-The knock off brands here are hilarious! For example: AmericEagle (instead of American Eagle). I have also seen advertisements for the new "zPad" (Forget iPad!)

Miscellaneous
-I have yet to find a public bathroom that has toilet paper and hand soap.

-Chinese will just randomly come up to us to take a picture with us. It's actually quite hilarious to see which one of us can get the most pictures/the most bizarre pictures in a day.

-Store owners always hand things to customers with two hands (include change). Supposedly, as a sign of respect, you should take things with both hands....hopefully I haven't insulted too many people by just grabbing my change with one hand...

-Bargaining is a most in China (except at places like grocery stores and department stores). More often than not, you can get things for 10% to 20% of what the seller originally asks for.


And finally, here's an update on our travel arrangements:
Our flight are officially booked for Malaysia and Thailand! We will be in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from July 23rd till the morning of July 27, and then Bangkok, Thailand from July 27 till August 1! Then it will be back to Beijing for a week before I head back to the US...It's amazing to think how little time we have left, but I can't wait for our trip!

We tried to book train tickets to go to Shanghai for a weekend, but we couldn't get tickets! In case you haven't heard, a new, high-speed train was just opened on July 1st that can travel between Beijing and Shanghai in a little less than 5 hours (compared to the 13 hour ride the old train would take). Well, since the train ride is as short as a flight (if not shorter, and there's no risk of a delayed flight) and about half the price, it seems everyone is just taking the train. In addition, the over-night, slow trains are being phased out. So, the overall story is: it was impossible for us to get tickets to go to Shanghai this weekend and now we're not sure if we'll be able to go!

Fifth Week in Beijing

It’s hard to believe that my time here in China is almost half over! It has definitely gone by very fast. So here’s a quick update on what I have been up to lately:

I've mostly gotten adapted to my lab here in Beijing and I work with one other student from the program, PJ. We normally just have group meetings on Mondays and then work Tuesday through Friday. To give you a brief overview of my project, I am working on these things called polymer grafts, which have a lot of bio-medical applications. The grafts lot basically like mesh made out of nino-fibers of polymers (plastics), which living cells can then grow on/around. There are many uses for these grafts; for example, on a basic level they can be used for burn victims and to strengthen bones. In the future, they could be used during brain-surgeries to prevent clotting and as a basis to make organs for transplants out of a patients own cells. The basic idea is that the polymer grafts would be used to make a model/frame for the cells to grow on, thereby producing an organ for transplant (sorry if that doesn't make the most sense!) PJ mostly works on the synthesis of these grafts and then I do a lot of characterization tests, including SEM (scanning electron microscope - used to look at the grafts at the nano-scale level), testing the electrical properties (mostly for brain applications), and more.

On Friday (June 24), we just had a normal day of work and then we had a lab dinner as a "good-bye" to two students from the lab who were graduating and a "welcome" to PJ and I who just joined the lab (2 weeks ago, but it's the thought that counts). The dinner was excellent, plus we got to try Peking duck for the first time, which was delicious!

On Saturday (June 25), we decided we wanted to see the Lama Temple (which we were originally scheduled to see our first week here, but never ended up happening), one of the largest Buddhist temples in the world. Of importance, Lama = high priest in Buddhism, not llama, like seen below! (Sorry...I couldn't help myself. Unfortunately, we did not see any llamas, as this picture was stolen from google)

I know absolutely nothing about Buddhism or its traditions, so I was quite surprised by many of the things in the temple. The Lama Temple was actually composed of 5 buildings in a straight row, all of which were symbolic of some part of Buddhism. In front of the first building, there were a lot of people burning incest before entering the temple. Of course, like 99% of all buildings in China, there were two lions, a male and a female, at the gate.

The first building of the temple had four large statues which, honestly, kind of creeped me out a little bit. The statues were probably about 15 feet tall and looked very menacing. Unfortunately, I only got pictures of two of them because we supposedly were not allowed to take pictures in the temple. However, only the foreigners were being told not to take pictures, which we thought was strange (even though the natives were being obnoxious about it and using flash).

The next building had a statue I did recognize! The Happy Buddha :)

The next two buildings had three female Buddhas in a row. As we went from building to building in the temple, we noticed that the size of the statues got bigger and bigger until we finally got to the final building (which is called The Pavilion of 10,000 Happinesses). Inside was one of the largest statues I've ever seen. In addition, the fact that it was inside this very cramped building made it look even bigger. The statue is about 90 feet tall and, as I discovered later, carved out of a single piece of wood (another Guinness World Record)!

In addition to the main temples, there were also smaller buildings that had more statues, most of which were very interesting. Some of the most interesting can be seen below.

I'm still not sure why they had statues of blue cows with 15 hands and feet but, hey, who am I to judge?

On Sunday, everyone in the program (saying "everyone" makes it sound like a bigger crowd than just the four of us...) was inviting to a going-away party for a colleague of Professor Coppola who had been working at Peking University for three months. It was a fun time plus we got to talk to Professor Coppola for the first time in a week about how everything was going because he has been in Hong Kong.

So that's about it for now. We're currently planning a large trip for the end of July because we have a week off of work. Right now it's looking like we're going to go to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Bangkok, Thailand! I'll keep you posted!

Day Trip to Longqing Gorge

This past weekend, we decided we wanted to go to Longqing Gorge, a location that many past participants have gone to. It is only about 2 hours away from Beijing via bus, so we decided to only go for the day.
It was an early morning on Saturday (June 18th), but we wanted to get to the gorge as early as possible because it opened at 7:30 and closed around 4:00. We met up with Oliver, our language instructor/student at Peking University because he also wanted to come with us, which ended up being a good thing. It was almost impossible to figure out where the buses left from and we're 99.9% sure we would not have found it if Oliver wasn't with us. We found the bus terminal about 20 minutes before the last bus left for the morning at 8:30 and it was an uneventful ride until about 10:30. We got stopped at an intersection and it took us a while to figure out why the road was blocked off: there was a cycling competition going on so we had to wait about 45 minutes in the bus before we could cross the intersection! The worst part of sitting in the bus for 45 minutes was that we had just planned to buy lunch at the gorge, so we had not bothered to bring anything besides water bottles. However, everyone else in the bus seemed to have brought MASSIVE amounts of food! There was one guy that had brought ham, huge sausages, bread, etc. for his entire group. We were joking around that if they had a turkey, it would have been just like Thanksgiving Dinner!
After the cycling competition finally ended, we were able to cross the street, only to find out that we were literally a minute!!! away from the place! So we were stuck (while hungry) across the street from Longqing Gorge for about 45 minutes!
Once we finally got out of the bus, we had a nice 15 minute or so walk to the entrance of Longqing Gorge/the place where we had to buy our entrance tickets. Once we got into the area, we had to take this huge escalator to the where the Gorge was which was shaped like a giant dragon, which was very cool.

Once we got to the top (over the dam), we took this nice boat ride around the gorge, which was very beautiful! There were many tall, skinny mountains, just like the kind you see in old Chinese movies and like the ones in Mulan.

There were also a lot of other things to do in the Gorge, including a lot of trails to walk around and there was a zip-line over the gorge, which we all decided to go. The view from the zip-line was very cool but we all commented that it was probably the slowest zip-line in the world; the ride on the speed-boat across the river in the gorge was more thrilling!
We also decided to rent some canoes for a little while and paddle around the gorge. Apparently, however, Chinese don't know what canoes are and they ended up being more like paddle-boats, which are a lot slower. It also didn't help that they only had two pieces of wood nailed together for a paddle, which made it difficult to paddle the boat.

The canoes were still a lot of fun though because people kept running into our boats. We're not sure if it was on purpose or not, but it was hard to steer the boats and it ended up turning into bumper-boats! Though I'm sure some of the people were purposely running into us because two guys did and then exclaimed in broken English, "You very beautiful girl!"
After walking around a little more, we headed back to the entrance because the place was closing and we needed to catch our bus back. It was definitely a fun way to spend the day and we were all exhausted after we got back, but it was nice to get out of the big city of Beijing for a while.