Starting in 2019, my company decided that Veteran’s Day was an official holiday, and in an even more exciting turn of events, it was a Monday! I booked a flight and a hotel on the edge of Chinatown and made a weekend of it. It was also a bid to get to the next level in frequent flier miles, which I achieved only to have it be absolutely useless within six months. Alas.
I had been to San Francisco before with my parents, a long time ago, and we’d done a lot of the famous stuff. Walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, took a tour of Alcatraz, driven on Lombard Street. So there was no pressure to see anything specific.
I started at Golden Gate Park. After a lovely wander through the paths, I visited the de Young Museum and the Japanese Tea Garden. The museum was great, I went to the extra exhibition about Black history and explored the rest of their gallery. Interestingly, they actually had some Turkmen storage bags on display! I tried to test my knowledge of the regions where they were created. The Japanese Tea Garden was stunning as well, I loved exploring all the different pathways.
After lunch at a food truck, I headed back to the Ferry Building and spent some time walking along the piers. There’s nothing quite like the sound of the ocean beating against the shore.
The next day, I got up bright and early for a hike that I’d read about, Lands End Trail. It was a bit of a trek from my hotel on the bus, but it was totally worth it. It was the highlight of my trip!
I’m kind of obsessed with this maze made out of stones. There was even a good view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the eastern portion of the trail.
I had one other goal in mind for my last full day, which was the Palace of Fine Arts! It showed up in my research as another cool landmark and it didn’t disappoint. It felt almost out of place in such a modern city.
Anyway. That’s all I’ve got. I don’t claim to be any sort of expert on San Francisco or anything, but it makes a great weekend trip for anyone who lives close enough. When travel is safe again, I’m looking forward to visiting again and exploring more of the city!
It’s unlike anywhere I’ve ever been before. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a movie or TV show, unlike anything I’ve ever read about in a book, unlike anything I’ve ever contemplated. It feels a little like the world’s largest science fiction movie set, or perhaps what would result if Walt Disney and President Snow from the Hunger Games decided to collaborate on a city. I spent the entire time we were there glued to the bus window, trying to capture every second into my memory, and actually strained my neck in my effort to see out both sides of the bus simultaneously.
Almost every building in Ashgabat is built out of white marble, imported from Italy. Everything is designed down to the smallest detail, from the lampposts to the telephone booths to the bus stations, and nearly every park and roundabout has a stunning monument of some sort. The government buildings are often themed to what their purpose is, like how the Department of Education looks like a giant book and I think the one for Energy or Natural Gas looks like a giant lighter. The stadium is recognizable from anywhere in the city, because it’s shaped like a horse. The airport (which is gorgeous, by the way) looks like a flying bird on the outside.
Ironically, the aspect of Ashgabat that felt the most unusual was the lack of people. When I started writing this post back in October, that was something that I had planned to comment on extensively. We could cross six lane streets and not see a single car. And then when COVID first hit, suddenly it felt like the whole world was like that. Nevertheless, for a pre-COVID city, it was shocking to go to parks and restaurants and malls and not see anyone around. We did spend some time in a mall that had locals, but almost at all of the monuments and museums, we were the only people there.
One of my absolute favorite places we visited was the park in the pictures above. See if you can spot me in that picture. The scale of the monuments is next level. While we were here, we got to watch a changing of the guard ceremony – I’m sad I didn’t get the chance to photograph or videotape it! They’re very strict about photos of anything involving the military, which is fair. But it was pretty amazing. The man twirled the gun like a baton.
This is the largest indoor ferris wheel in the world. I know, weird flex, isn’t it? But we arrived in the middle of a hot and hazy day to find it empty and turned off. We all sort of shrugged and got ready to get back in the bus, but our guide said they would turn it on just for us. And he went and got the employees, and sure enough, they ushered us in and turned on the ferris wheel.
There’s the view from the way down. There was an arcade at the bottom of the ferris wheel, and that was all off too. Our guide went to get the employees again and they turned it all on for us. We played a few rounds of air hockey, and then he asked us if we wanted to do bumper cars. “Sure,” we said. Out came the employees again. Is this what it feels like to be a movie star?
One of the other world records held in Turkmenistan is the largest handmade carpet. We went to the Carpet Museum while we were there. I wasn’t sure what to expect – a whole museum of rugs? But it was amazing. Our guide talked about how each design represents a specific region, and taught us to recognize where the patterns come from. The craftsmanship is very impressive, although sadly I could only take pictures in the final room.
One last picture to highlight before the gallery – this one, taken not by me but by someone else on my tour group. This is a bottle of water that a waiter brought out at one of our dinners.
Images speak louder the words, so here’s a selection of pictures I took while I was in Ashgabat. It’s not an easy place to go, but I’m so glad I got to have even a small glimpse into one of the most private and unusual countries in the world.
I got behind on posts, because I was traveling a lot, and then COVID hit and I didn’t travel at all. And suddenly it’s been over a year since I’ve posted something here. I wish I could say that it’s because I’ve been acquiring some fabulous new hobbies, but that’s not true. I’ve been working and doing a masters program. I’ve read plenty of great books. I’ve baked bread. I’ve tried not to keel over from Zoom fatigue now that everything is done through a webcam.
Anyway. I’ll be posting soon on the remainder of my trip to Turkmenistan and a few guides of cities I traveled to in November 2019 and my last big trip, in Cuba. And then I’ll move on to what I’ve been doing since the pandemic started, like hiking and road trips. As it turns out, living in the American West is good for something. There are some world-class natural wonders within pretty easy driving distance. I’m looking forward to the day when I can get back on a plane and travel to foreign cities again, but for now, it’s nice to recharge out in nature.
This post is basically going to be everything we did outside of Darvaza and Ashgabat, with a few random reflections on my time in the country. It’s going to get a bit out of order, because I want to keep my pictures from Ashgabat together.
I wish I had a picture of every single billboard we saw, because they were all fascinating. Most of the time, they had this sort of font, but sometimes there were horses or pictures of the president.What’s a road trip without a couple stops at local gas stations? In Turkmenistan, every gas station is state run and looks exactly the same.
During our drives across the country, there were a number of checkpoints we had to go through. Tourism is highly restricted in Turkmenistan, and any visitor is required to be part of a tour group. I believe there’s an exception for anyone who can get a five day transit visa, but even so, it was incredibly helpful to have our guide. He warned us when we weren’t allowed to take pictures, explained about the history and culture, and arranged activities and tours based on our interests.
The countryside reminds me a lot of Arizona in the United States. There were less cacti and more camels, but otherwise, it felt like we could be driving to my grandma’s house. There are a lot of stalls on the side of the road selling melons throughout Turkmenistan, and we stopped at one of them on the way out to the gas crater and bought some for dinner. The woman selling them cut off a few chunks of them and let us try, and it was so delicious. At one point on a drive, our guide played music sung by the president of Turkmenistan. Apparently, he’s put out several albums. Some of the songs were pretty catchy.
As we left the Darvaza gas crater the next morning, we stopped by a few other craters that had collapsed but were full of mud or water – they weren’t quite as impressive as the one full of fire. Nevertheless, it seems like maybe that’s not the best area of the desert to drill for natural gas. Then our guide took us to a semi-nomadic village. Comparing that with Ashgabat, the difference was rather stark. Our guide told us that some of these villages don’t have running water. They still live essentially how they lived prior to the Soviet Union, except they no longer migrate the way they did historically. Not all the villages we saw were as poor as the one pictured, but it was an interesting look at income inequality in Turkmenistan.
This was especially startling considering our next stop was Ashgabat. I’ll get to that in my next post. From Ashgabat, we took a day trip to ruins at Nisa, which is an ancient fortress. We saw several locals taking wedding pictures from one of the hills, which was understandable – it was absolutely beautiful to walk around as the sun set.
We headed out to Mary, which is the 4th largest city in Turkmenistan. On the way, we stopped off at ruins in Abiverd, which were probably my favorite that we saw. More of it seemed to be standing, and we spent maybe half an hour just wandering through. There were so many pottery shards and other small artifacts throughout the ruins, and it almost felt like living out the fantasy of being an archeologist. I could kneel down and wipe away dirt and find a piece of a glazed pot, and there’s something so thrilling about that.
At one point on our way both to and from Mary, we passed within about 10 miles from the border with Iran. Turkmenistan is at such an interesting crossroads – it borders both Iran and Afghanistan, and Russia is just on the other side of the Caspian Sea. Turkmenistan actually petitioned the UN to become formally neutral, which is something they’re very proud of. There’s a monument in one of their parks, the Arch of Neutrality, that celebrates this.
Mary felt like a city that had developed more naturally than Ashgabat – it had less of that intentionally planned vibe. There was one section with the types of buildings that we saw in Ashgabat, with a large mosque, a library, and a few other monuments. We stopped there after dinner one of the days we were there and walked around. When we went back to the bus, our bus driver had begun talking to two local older ladies, and they ended up talking to us as well. It was a bit of a challenge but one of the people in our group spoke some basic Russian and they could communicate that way. They said that the Canadian prime minister (Trudeau) is very attractive and that the UK prime minister (Johnson) looks like he just got out of bed, which sounds accurate on both counts.
We had a day trip from Mary as well. We went to Merv, which was one of the world’s largest cities at one point. It was an oasis city in the Silk Road for centuries. So much of it has been destroyed, but we got to walk around the remaining structures. It’s fascinating to see the scale of what remains. We literally had to take the bus between the ruins. Like the other ruins we visited, shards of pottery still littered the ground. Occasionally we saw them embedded in the walls of the ruins.
At one point, we saw a herd of camels being shepherded into a new area. I’d never seen a camel outside of a zoo before this trip!
After Merv, part of our group wanted to go to a different archeological site, which is something that was a logistical challenge for our guide because of the controls on tourism. Three people elected to go to Gonur Tepe, which is an important historical place, but it required a drive through the desert that was 2+ hours each way, and the majority of our group wasn’t that interested. We’d been coming off of a number of extremely long days in Ashgabat and wanted a little free time. So our guide dropped us off at a restaurant for lunch with the bus driver and went with them.
For the afternoon, we mostly stayed at the hotel, but we were allowed to take a quick trip to the market across the street. The bus driver watched us from the hotel. Crossing the street was a bit of an adventure, as there weren’t any crosswalks and drivers have the right of way over pedestrians, but we followed the locals and made it there and back in one piece. The market was mostly fruit and vegetables and other food products, so it was all locals. It was pleasant to just be among them after so many places we’d gone that had no Turkmen people. Our guide told us locals prefer markets since they can haggle on the prices. After walking around for a bit, we ended up playing cards and drinking while we waited for the rest of our group to get back for dinner. We played cards the next day on the bus as well and invited our guide to join us. He told us he had never played cards with women before. He picked up the games quickly and the ride back felt much faster.
Turkmenistan was fascinating for many reasons, a number of which I’ll get into in my next post. Few countries are so isolated from the rest of the world. When we would wander through grocery stores, the prices of any imported products were outrageously expensive. The Nutella pictured above is about $32 USD for the larger size. There was not a single Western chain that I saw throughout the entire country. No McDonald’s, no Starbucks, nothing. All of the gas stations were state run. I had been shocked at the number of Western food chains when I was in China, and here I had the complete opposite reaction.
One of the other aspects I found interesting is the cult of personality surrounding the leader of Turkmenistan. There were a number of billboards and images of him throughout the city, which is something I’ve never seen before in the countries I’ve visited. This billboard above was next to the large mosque in Mary.
My next post will be on Ashgabat, which was absolutely a highlight of this trip for me!
You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to use that title.
From Khiva, we woke up early so that we could cross the border into Turkmenistan! For those of you who know nothing about Turkmenistan, you’re in good company – it’s one of the most closed off and secretive countries on the planet. John Oliver recently did a segment about it, which has helped raise awareness that it exists. The guy at Walgreens who took my passport photos for the visa had seen that segment and was very excited to hear I was going there. Basically, the short version is that it was once a primarily tribal and nomadic region, and then it existed under the Soviet Union for about 70 years, and since 1991, it has been ruled by two consecutive autocrats. It’s also the world’s 4th largest producer of natural gas, so it’s a very rich and very isolated country. For additional context, I would also recommend this podcast about the first ruler post-USSR.
Low key obsessed with looking at things in the Turkmen language. Their billboards were all fascinating and I wish I had pictures of every single one.
This was actually my first land border crossing. We went through about three different checkpoints to get out of Uzbekistan, and then ended up in no man’s land. Turkmenistan would periodically send what looked like an authentically Soviet minivan to come collect us. Our entire tour group and all our luggage were crammed in and we were driven to the checkpoint. Thankfully our new guide was there to help us navigate the visa on arrival process. It’s one of the most difficult visas to get, apparently. We had our Letters of Invitation already, so we just had to pay the fee and wait in all the lines. The fee, interestingly enough, varies both country to country and day to day. There’s a base rate per country. I think for a US citizen it was $55, which was the same as Canada and Australia. For the UK citizen on our trip, it was $85. Then from there they charge an additional amount, which could be anything. I think mine ended up being around $82. You have to pay in new US dollars. Like, beautiful crisp ones – they actually turned a few of mine away. And after each person paid, they had to sign 18 different receipts (and no, that’s not an exaggeration). Nonetheless, while the process was a bit long, it was essentially painless.
Our first stop within the country was Konye-Urgench. I’ll be quite honest with you, dear internet, I don’t know much about ancient history in Central Asia. So I’m sure some of the historical significance was lost on me. It’s an ancient city, it was on the Silk Road, and it’s a UNESCO site. That’s all I’ve got.
It’s interesting, though, because Turkmenistan takes a very different tack from Uzbekistan. Instead of building their historical sites back up to look like they did in the past, they leave everything more or less as is. Obviously there’s preservation work, as you can see above, but it doesn’t feel as though you’re actually back in the past. Most of it is left in ruin. More on this later in some of the other sites.
Konye-Urgench also had a decent amount of locals, more than we saw at pretty much any other site we visited, and our guide said that it’s still looked at as a holy place, and so people will come to pray there and do rituals. There was one group gathered by a tree, and the tree had a sort of hole in it where there was water. People would dip their hands in the water and touch their faces, and it was said to cure them of headaches and other pains.
Once we had seen all the buildings there, we switched from our bus to some vehicles with four wheel drive and headed off into the desert to go to the Darvaza Crater! This is something I was really looking forward to. It’s also sometimes called the Door to Hell or the Gates of Hell, which is my personal favorite since it sounds more dramatic. The story here is that they were drilling for natural gas out in the desert – and we’re talking WAY in the desert – when there was a collapse where they were drilling. They figured they’d just burn off the excess natural gas that was being released into the atmosphere, and they figured it would burn off within a couple weeks. And that was in 1971. It’s still burning.
The drive out was honestly a bit harrowing. Maybe it was just that I was sitting in the back of the car, but it felt a bit like the Disney Indiana Jones ride, where they’re intentionally trying to make it feel bumpy. But we arrived in one piece! We’d unfortunately missed sunset, so we had dinner before heading over to the crater. Our guide had bought us some vodka and then there were grilled vegetables and meat.
Standing next to the crater was… amazing. Mesmerizing, to watch the flames flicker. Sometimes there would be a gust of wind and the combination of heat and gas would make it feel as though you were standing in an oven. Dumb tourists exist everywhere, because we watched people dangle their feet over the edge while their friends took a picture. It takes a lot of audacity to do that, considering this is an attraction that was literally created by the ground collapsing.
We spent the night camping, which was surprisingly comfortable. I was up very early, and although we may have missed the sunset, I got to spend sunrise at the crater. Watching the sun crest over the horizon was incredible. When it was time for breakfast, I headed back and made friends with the local guard dog, which was an alabai. They’re a Turkmen guard dog, and they actually clip both the ears and the tail so that the dog has less weaknesses if it gets into a fight. The one at our camp was so sweet, and I was sad to leave him when we continued on our tour!
I had high expectations for the Gates of Hell, and it was everything I wanted it to be. Plus, honestly, the fact that I can say that I’ve “stood at the Gates of Hell” or “camped at the Gates of Hell” or any other variation thereof…. that alone almost makes the entire trip worth it 😉
When I told my family, friends, and coworkers that I was going to Central Asia for vacation, the number one response I got was “…..why?” One of my coworkers helpfully added that Central Asia is “the Midwest of the world.” And so I found myself having to explain why I wanted to go to this particular region of the world. Again, and again, and again. Somehow, a lot of people haven’t realized how fascinating it is. And now that I’ve gotten a tiny taste, I know I’ll be back at some point!
My journey started with a lot of long layovers. It seemed like all of the options to fly there either had a layover that was about 45 minutes or 7 hours, so my choices were to miss a connection or feel as though I was living in the various airports I went through. Nevertheless, I finally ended up in Tashkent after an absolutely stunning early morning flight in which I watched the sun rise out my window. The whole desert lit up in this amazing pink glow and I could see all these patterns that the wind had traced into the sand.
Landing in Tashkent, I had no idea what to expect. I’ve seen pictures of the old Silk Road sites on Instagram, but never the capital. It was very different than I expected, with wide open boulevards and so many parks and green spaces. Even the airport had a garden in front of it. I met my driver and headed to the Hotel Uzbekistan, pictured above, which is apparently where old Soviet heads of state used to stay when they visited. It was early, so I couldn’t check in yet, but I did some exploring.
The hotel was right across the street from the Emir Temur square, which is very central and a great place to start my visit. I wandered around through some gardens and tried to go in several cafés, but nothing seemed to open until about 10 am there. So instead I just took lots of pictures and took it all in. At one point, a soldier asked me to delete one because I took a picture of a government building without realizing it. Oops.
I ended up taking a long nap once my hotel room opened up. I wish I could say I explored more, but the 11 hour jetlag really hit me harder than I expected. Instead, I woke up basically just in time to go meet up with my tour group. We all went out for dinner at a place a few of them had found the day before, which was a nice introduction to everyone!
The next morning we were off to Khiva. We had an early flight, which was a bit of a cluster. There was a snafu with who had the tickets and it ended up being a stressful morning as we rushed through security. Nevertheless, we made it to Khiva, where we found that our hotel had opened the literal day before. When I got my room key, they were in my room still drilling coat hooks into the wall, which was a bit wild.
Khiva is one of the magnificent Silk Road sites in Uzbekistan. They’re big proponents of restoring their monuments to look as they did in the past, which is a really cool experience. It feels like you’re actually walking through the city as it existed, with markets springing up on the sides of every walkway. We had tours both of the days we were there, and our guide took us through various exhibits about life in the region. My favorite fact I learned there is that Uzbekistan once actually had money made out of silk!
Everywhere we looked had these magnificent mosaics. The amount of detail that went into the tile work was amazing. We toured a wood carving area and a carpet making area as well and watched them use methods that have been used throughout history. The best times to be in the city were right around sunset, when everything lit up in a soft golden color. I also ended up climbing the highest minaret tower in the city, which had the best views (although it did make me extremely sore for the next several days)!
On the second day we were there, it was my birthday! Our hotel had figured this out when they registered my passport, which I guess is the advantage to being one of only 9 guests, and they actually threw me a party. They brought out a cake and champagne, which was lovely. There was also a dance festival going on at that time, so we tried to go watch it, but it seemed as though they were having technical difficulties, so we didn’t get the chance to see much. Still, walking around the city at night was very cool.
All in all, Khiva was wonderful. It’s very much still developing its tourism infrastructure. Ours was not the only hotel under construction when we arrived, and a lot of the buildings around the old city had been knocked down to make way for new hotels and restaurants. I imagine it will be very different in a few years once it’s more built up. I’d still like to return to Uzbekistan to see Bukhara and Samarkand some day, but I’m so glad I got a taste of the country through Tashkent and Khiva!
Despite having a childhood full of road trips to U.S. National Parks, I had never been to Yellowstone before. Crazy, isn’t it?
On the way up, we stopped at Grand Teton and stayed in a cabin with stunning views of the mountains. We mostly ate cheese and crackers, drank wine, and played Trivial Pursuit, which was a challenge because the game was from my mom’s first marriage and there were straight-up references to the Soviet Union. I struggled hard on the pop culture category, since most of it was outdated for me.
The next day we headed up to Yellowstone. I absolutely get the popularity, it was absolutely stunning. We were there the weekend before Memorial Day, so a few things were closed and it was still pretty cold. We considered this both a plus and a minus – the hot springs were often clouded with steam, which was disappointing when it came to the Grand Prismatic spring (see the picture below), but it also meant we could see more of the small geothermal features that we might have missed on the side of the road.
Grand Prismatic may have been a little disappointing, but the coolest part was seeing bison tracks all over the rocks near it. In fact, based on the amount of bison scat we saw all over the park, it seems as though they manage to get right next to the geothermal features. We would marvel at how they would have crossed through the walkways and directly adjacent to bubbling geysers.
Obviously Old Faithful and the other geysers were a particular highlight. I even started to get used to the strong sulphur smell by our third or fourth stop.
The canyon and the Mammoth Hot Springs were also incredible, with these gorgeous colored rocks. When we were up at Mammoth Hot Springs, we even saw a small herd of elk right next to cars and a few bison who ran through part of the town.
Speaking of animal encounters, there were a lot of amazing sightings. We saw so many bison, including adorable babies. At one point, we ended up in major traffic, and it turned out that five or so bison were walking along the road, which meant a whole line of cars had to slow down and drive behind them. There were also two black bears, and most amazingly, a grizzly bear swimming across a river that got out and shook itself on the other side. We also saw what I suspect was a wolf, although my parents and I are not quite sure.
On the way back, we cut through Idaho and saw the Valley of the Moon, which had incredible rock formations, along with the ruins of an old Japanese internment camp. We also stopped by the wolf and bear sanctuary, where I took the picture with the statue and we got to see two fully grown grizzly bear brothers roughhouse and play. All in all, a fantastic trip to one of the most beautiful regions of the United States!
You know my biggest regret about my visit to Seoul? That I had such a short time there. I loved it immediately. I took a red-eye from Chengdu and landed at about 5 a.m. The flight over was amazing, actually, they gave us full meal service despite the fact that we were only in the air for about three hours. When the stewardess asked me if I wanted food, I assumed it was that overpriced snack food they sell on American flights of that length. When I saw a bunch of people eating dinner, I asked the girl next to me if it was free. She said yes but gave me that “wow, you’re such a dumb American” look.
After I stored my luggage in the airport, I headed into the city! It was amazing to not need to carry around luggage while I was there. There was a slight wrinkle in getting transportation, because it turns out that you can only pay for their metro in cash. Which wouldn’t have been an issue at all if it hadn’t been for the limit placed on my debit card back when I was sorting out the issues with my bank in China. I managed to get $20 out of an ATM and celebrated like I was a broke college student. For everything else, I had the wonderful experience of having my credit cards work again.
My first stop was a Korean bathhouse. It was similar to the one I went to in Osaka, which made it less awkward because I actually knew what I was doing. I spent a lot of time in the one with massaging jets, got some sleep, took a shower, charged my phone, and got to the point where I felt like a real person again. Getting into a new country at 5 a.m. does make things more interesting.
Once I had gotten refreshed at the spa, I headed over to the Korean War Memorial. It was free, which is always a nice bonus, and it was fascinating. They had tons of information about the Korean War, but beyond that, there were exhibits about Korea through the ages and military technology. Romy tells me there’s an even area where they talk about the “comfort women” problem from their invasion of Japan, although I didn’t see that part.
From there, I went to check in to my hanok. I went back and forth over staying in a hotel or staying in the traditional homestay-style place that I found online and went with the latter, which was a great choice. It was the home of a nice Korean woman who lent me slippers and made me tea, and I slept on a mattress pad on a heated floor. In recovering from my sleepless night on the plane, I slept very well that night. But before I went to sleep, I took a quick tour of my neighborhood and headed to Changgyeongung Palace. It was a much more extensive palace complex than I expected. I had dinner in the area and walked around the neighborhood until I was exhausted.
The next morning, I went to the Trick-eye Museum. In hindsight, going there as a solo traveler was not my best move, because it is much better if someone can take pictures of you. It wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be. But! It was absolutely worth it, because the neighborhood was really cool and I got to spend the rest of the day exploring it.
My favorite find was the Harry Potter café. It had sections for the Great Hall, the dormitories, the common rooms, and a wizard café, and they had robes that people could try on. I spent more than I’d care to admit to get a butterbeer and Harry Potter birthday cake, as pictured above. I absolutely loved it!
A few other notes from South Korea: (1) They have heated seats on their metro! Which means they might even beat Japan on the metro front. (2) I met so many South Koreans, as they were very friendly and would start talking to me in English. Several of them asked me if I was living in Korea – do they not get tourists? Was I just not there in tourist season? Either way, I’ve decided that if I did want to move to East Asia, I would pick Seoul. (3) I want to go back already. At least it’s a good stopover back to the US. Next time, I’d like to take one of the tours of the demilitarized zone, and I’d like to get down to Busan as well. As always, there are so many places to travel and so little time and money.
A highlight of my trip to China was being able to visit my friend Keri in Chengdu! She’s teaching English there, and she let me stay with her for a few days and showed me around. For the first night, we got street food near her apartment and explored the markets near there. The butcher stalls were fascinating, with rabbit heads, intestines, and buckets of blood. There were even live turtles being sold at the market. Keri told me that some places sell live chickens and will cut off the heads in front of you when you buy them. The street food was good, we picked sticks of whatever we wanted and then they grilled them. There were also quite a few potato dishes, which I am always here for.
From there, we headed to a “paint and sip” event which included both ex-pats and locals. I painted a scene from Looney Tunes and drank lots of wine, and we went out after with some of them for more food. I had a great time, and it was so nice to be able to meet some of the locals.
The next day I got a full tour. We headed into the city, starting at a lovely park. Keri and I tried one of the beautiful caramelized designs – look at the butterfly below! There was also a koi pond where people could feed them using some sort of fish-food bottle mechanism.
We headed over to a glitzy mall afterward. Keri tells me it’s a place where a lot of locals go to get pictures taken. People took our pictures too. It’s fairly common for Chinese people to take pictures of tourists – while I was in Shanghai trying to get a selfie in front of the skyline, I realized I was in someone’s shot and went to move, only to have her motion that she wanted to be in a picture with me! We went to lunch at an amazing French place. The bread was delicious.
That night, Keri took me to a Sichuan opera show! They had puppetry, animal shapes in shadows, dancing, and something called face switching. They were wearing masks, and they would raise fans up to their faces and have a different mask a second later. There was one part where the man changed the colors of his clothes about six times in a row, and I still have no idea how he did it. It was fantastic to see local Chinese arts.
The next morning, Keri had to go to work. She sent me off to the Panda Conservatory, which was high up on my list. I got to see so many giant pandas! The babies were especially adorable. They had red pandas there as well, including an area where they were only separated from the path by a chain link fence. While in that area, I turned around and found one on the path with me! It probably passed within two feet of where I was standing.
I met up with Keri again after work and we had a last dinner before I headed to the airport. It was so amazing to have Keri show me around and tell me all about the aspects of Chinese culture that she’s experience since she moved there. I learned about how they plan their cities far in advance and pay people to live in the developing areas, and what it’s like to work there. It was a great way to end my time in China! Hopefully she and I will be able to meet up again soon for more adventures in Asia.
When I arrived in Xi’an, I had exactly one priority: see the Terracotta Warriors. I met up with the driver I had arranged and headed an hour outside the city to the archeological site. It’s amazing to walk into what looks like an airplane hangar and find it filled with life-sized statues of men and horses. There are three buildings, and they show the archeological dig at various stages of completion. The most famous pictures are from the main one, which you can see below, and then there’s a museum that shows some of the soldiers up close. They also had an Egyptian museum. I think they were going for the parallels of Egyptian tombs and what happened here, although that wasn’t made clear in the messaging. After I had seen everything there was to see, I headed back into the main room one more time to bask in the incredible feat before heading back to meet my driver.
And then, the driver took me to my hotel. Except it turned out it wasn’t my hotel, because they had no record of my reservation. They were very nice about it, giving me tea and water and letting me use their phone to make arrangements. But it took about two hours to get everything sorted out and make my way to my new hotel. Between the wasted time, my new hotel’s less central location, and the fact that Xi’an’s air quality was listed as “hazardous,” I didn’t get to bike around the city wall or walk through the Muslim Quarter. I pretty much ended up just walking around a bit near my hotel and going to bed early.
Hopefully some day I make it back to Xi’an. The little bit I saw outside of the car window and the train made me wish I had gotten the chance to explore it the way I wanted to. But at least I got to see the Terracotta Warriors! They’ve been on my list for ages, and I’ll never forget standing in that warehouse-sized building and staring into the faces of that statue army.
My first stop was a Korean bathhouse. It was similar to the one I went to in 
From there, I went to check in to my hanok. I went back and forth over staying in a hotel or staying in the traditional homestay-style place that I found online and went with the latter, which was a great choice. It was the home of a nice Korean woman who lent me slippers and made me tea, and I slept on a mattress pad on a heated floor. In recovering from my sleepless night on the plane, I slept very well that night. But before I went to sleep, I took a quick tour of my neighborhood and headed to Changgyeongung Palace. It was a much more extensive palace complex than I expected. I had dinner in the area and walked around the neighborhood until I was exhausted.
