The Masseys Come to Hong Kong!

The Masseys are in Hong Kong! Matt's parents flew in on Friday night, and sadly, Matt and I were almost an hour late to pick them up! Their flight got in early and there were no lines in customs...we had calculated that it would take them at least a half an hour to get through customs...oops!

Saturday morning we took them to dim sum. Because it is Chinese New Year, there was absolutely no wait. Unbelievable! Usually it is at least an hour wait on the weekends. Central Hong Kong feels sort of eerie right now because it is deserted...everyone (or at least all the expats)has left for Chinese New Year. It works out well for us because Matt has time off work, and I have time off school, so we can stay home and hang out with Marti and Liam.

After dim sum, we headed over to Victoria Park, where we heard there was a New Year's market with lots of flowers and Chinese New Years presents and gifts to buy. The market was extrememly crowded.

I was amazed because the Masseys seem to have no jet lag. I was more tird by the end of the day than they were!



The Masseys arrive in Hong Kong



Marti and Liam with a Chinese New Year statue in Hong Kong Park



Eating Dim Sum at City Hall



The Chinese New Year Market in Victoria Park

I can die happy...

...now that I have seen Kenny G in person. On Saturday night Matt and I met up with a bunch of our friends for Raul's birthday. At the end of the night, we ended up at Kee Club. When Matt and I left, Kenny G was outside! He was doing a concert on Sunday and I guess he wanted to hit the town the night before. The funny thing is, people recognized him and stared at him, but no one wanted his picture or autograph or anything. Two Chinese guys offered to take our picture with Kenny (maybe they assume all white people love Kenny G?) but we said we didn't need one. We offered to take their picture with Kenny, but they just laughed and said no. I guess people that are out late on a Saturday night aren't the type of people that are into Kenny G!

Boat Trip to Koh Phi Phi

Beautiful Scenery in Thailand

The day after the wedding, Steve and Grace treated everyone to a boat trip to Koh Phi Phi. The scenery was stunning, as it always seems to be in Thailand. I loved it. The water was warm and clear, and the snorkeling was good. You really can't go wrong with a day on a boat.



Meagan and Julie on the Boat

After a long day on the water, we went back to our hotel and showered, and then went to dinner in Phuket Town at a very strange restaurant. The owner was this strange looking woman that kept making the guys get up and dance with her, even though it was early and the music wasn't really suitable. Then, she got up and started dancing on our table while our dessert was being served. No one else was going crazy like she was. Then, a transvestite came out and started singing. It seems like you can't go to Thailand without somehow unexpectedly being forced to sit through a show where a transvestite lip syncs very badly to horrible music.

After dinner, we went to the worst place on the Earth: Bangla Street inPatong. This place is where all of the dregs of humanity go. I can't tell you how disgusted I was. And I have seen many disgusting things in my years. I am not naive, I swear...No one living in Asia can be oblivious to prostitution. But this was the worst place I have ever seen. The desperation of the women, mixed with the disgustingness of the men was apalling. The men looked like they had been out at sea for 20 years and they hadn't seen a woman or a shower for twice that amount of time. The women looked like they were desperate, but had been doing this for so long that they had forgotten what they were doing. Then we realized that most of the women were actually men. When we got back to our hotel after far too many hours spent in Patong, Matt and I had a huge discussion about the grossness of it all. He didn't think it was one bit sad. I thought, "How could I possibly be with someone that did not feel at least slightly sick about what we just saw?" (I have not gone into the gory details of the night...) He thought the women chose their life to be like that. As a woman, I just don't think so.



The beginning of a long night in Patong

Phuket

This past weekend Matt and I went to Phuket because our friends Grace and Steve were getting married. A bunch of us from Hong Kong were on the same flight, so it was a lot of fun. Most of us were staying at the Katathani Hotel, so it was even more fun. Grace and Steve went to Berkeley, and all of their friends still live in the Bay Area, and it was great to hang out with some California people for a while! We were talking about Norhtern California and San Francisco, and it made me very nostalgic for the US...Matt and I decided we definitely want to live there if we ever move back.


Meagan Facing a Thai Dancer at the Rehearsal Dinner

The wedding was held at Mama Tri's Villa Royale. It was stunning! It overlooked a rocky section of the coastline and the hotel was built to blend in with the stones of the beach. The pool was amazing. It was nice because it was a small ceremony, with only 50 guests present. I guess you can have a wedding that small when your family is small! Unfortunately I think a lot of their family members couldn't make it to the wedding. All of us Hong Kongers could though, since it is only a 2 or 3 hour flight!



Don't they look happy that they just got married?



The new couple with flowers thrown from the crowd

After the ceremony, everyone went down to the beach to light these giant lanterns and send them up into the sky. It was very scenic. Then we had a nice dinner, and then I was exhausted! Everyone went home pretty early...I think all of us were fried from being out in the hot sun all day. Thailand is HOT. At least it wasn't as humid as it usually is...but still, my hair looked like a puff ball the whole time.



Me and the Ladies

I was slightly worried about going to Thailand again, because this trip to Phuket would be almost exactly one year after my last trip to Phuket. Last time I went to Phuket, I had my first Multiple Sclerosis flare up. Because of this, I was slightly nervous to go back again. Luckily, everything was fine. I was tired alot, but I think it was from the heat and from the amount of time I was spending with large groups of people. That tires me out. Also, I just got back from Vietnam and had just finished dealing with all of my immigration issues in Hong Kong. So, I was tired during the trip, but not catastrophically so. I am not sure if I get tired so easily due to my MS, or because I am getting older, or because my life is so unsettled. Whatever the reason, I have realized that I need to slow down sometimes and not push myself too much. Also, I need to tell Matt when I need to rest. For instance, on this trip I told him that I needed an hour or two alone in the hotel room to read. He was ok with it and I felt alot better afterwards.





The pool was amazing!

New Year's Eve

For New Year's Eve, Matt and I just cruised around Saigon. We had no special plans. I got home late from the spa and he had a long day, so we just walked around. There was a giant street fair, and we bought some sparklers to celebrate. Then we sat down and people watched. I saw a woman picking up cans to recycle. She had a limp and her arms had tremors. I was inspired by the fact that she could have been begging but instead she was recycling. Then I was thinking, maybe she was injured in the war. I had just read a book about Kim Phuc, a girl who had been burned by a napalm bomb. The book made me very sad, so maybe that is why I felt like I should give the woman money. I rarely give money when I travel, but I felt like I should give this woman money. Then I worried that maybe I was wrong, and that I would insult her by giving her money. I decided to trust my first instinct and give her something.

At around 11 pm, people started going home. I am not sure why...we ended up going to get ice cream. Not very exciting, but we had fun anyway!



Meagan with a Vietnamese Hat



Meagan with sparkler



First Kiss of 2006

Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City)

I loved Siagon! It was my favorite part of our Vietnam trip. The city felt very vibrant and alive...you could feel the forward momentum almost. Alot of my love of Saigon has to do with the wonderful spa I went to, L'Apothiquaire. It was GORGEOUS! It was housed in an old French villa in District 3. The inside was all white with dark wood trim and purple accents everywhere. The floors were tiled with mosics and there was a spiral staircase. It was luxurious and wonderful. I paid 60 US dollars for a half day at the spa. This included an hour long facial, an hour long massage, a "spa meal" served on the beautiful patio next to the pool, a manicure and pedicure, and a head massage with shampoo and hair styling. Amazing! After being in Beijing, then driving through the Mekong Delta and frying myself in the sun and staying in a very rustic beach hotel, I needed the spa time!

Matt and I split up for the day. He went to the Cu Chi Tunnels, which were built by the Viet Cong during the war. They lived underneath the city and launched night attacks on the South Vietnamese. Matt had read a book about it during our trip, and it sounds like it was very interesting. He got to go inside the tunnels and fire an M-16. He had to ride on the bumpy Vietnamese roads for 70 kilometers on the back of a guy's motor bike! Sounds horrible...good thing I was at the spa!


Saigon is Motorbike Madness!



Matt at the entrance to the Cu Chi tunnels



Matt on a tank

Snorkeling

The next day we went on a snorkeling trip set up by the guy we had met at the ferry terminal. It was a lot of fun! You are definitely guaranteed a good day if you go out on a boat and go snorkeling. On the same boat were two guys that live in Hong Kong, some English teachers from Saigon, some people from Beijing, and some Germans. (Of course Germans...you can't go anywhere in Asia without running into some Germans on holiday.)

There was one scary moment where I was pulled by the current away from the boat and around a small island. I really felt the strength of the ocean! It was amazing! Good thing I was wearing my flourescent yellow bathing suit at the time...that way they could see me if I needed to be rescued! Haha! I vowed to wear that bathing suit on all future snorkeling trips.

The snorkeling was a lot of fun, but not half as scenic or beautiful as snorkeling in Thailand or the Philippines. (Okay! I will stop comparing Vietnam to other countries!)



Matt in the water



Secluded Beach

Phu Quoc

After our long drive through the Mekong Delta, Matt and I were definitely ready to relax in Phu Quoc. When we arrived, we were bomabarded by two menoffering us a ride to our resort, a snorkeling trip, a hotel, their business card, and other things I can't remember. My firstinstinct when people come up to me is to not trust them and to tell them to go away. Matt didn't though, and the guy turned out to be nice and he took us snorkeling the next day.

Our hotel,the Thousand Stars Resort, was, um, interesting to say the least. It was on a nice beach, which was good, but the staff acted like they had never had guests before. They didn't have enough towels for everyone, and for dinner they had all the food layed out as if it was a buffet, but you had to pay for each item. They didn't keep track of what you ate though, so at the end of the meal we had to tell them everything that we had eaten, and they acted like we were trying to put one over on them! During theday, the staff slept in all the hammocks in the shade...so guests hadto sit in the blazing sun. They used the pool table constantly so that none of the guests could play. They were rude to some people...we sat down to breakfast and two British girls were already there. They gave us menus, andthegirls didn't havethemyet. We ordered eggs and got them...the girls ordered eggs and the waitress told them the restuarant was out of eggs. Then two more people came and ordered eggs and were given them! Crazy! The whole time we were there I lived in fear of making the waitresses mad... The other weird thing about our hotel was that there were life size ceramic animals everywhere, including a giant half naked mermaid.

Phu Quoc was nice, but the beach was not as nice as Thailand or the Philippines, and the people were way less friendly. It is a very small island with not too many tourists, which was nice. There are only a few hotels there. Given the expensive, government regulated price of flying to Vietnam, the rudeness of the people, and the so-so beach, I will probably not go back to Phu Quoc any time soon. I would much rather go to the Philippines! Or Thailand! Either one would cost half theprice to fly to.




Matt at the Thousand Stars Resort



Matt with a giant half naked mermaid statue



Meagan on a dock



Meagan with a giant shrimp

The Mekong Delta

From Hanoi, Matt and I flew to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and hired a car to drive us to Can Tho in the Mekong Delta. It was a long, slow, bumpy ride! I probably would not do it again unless I had more time to peruse the area. We were on a tight time schedule, and unfortunately we spent most of our time driving! It was interesting to see the Delta: lots of rice paddies and women wearing ao dais and conical hats. Very scenic! Our hotel in Can Tho was not very good, but I think we were just spoiled after the Church Hotel in Hanoi. Early the next morning, we went hired a boat to take us to the floating market. It was very picturesque. People were selling all types of fruits and vegetables and you good even buy pho or coffee from peoples' boats. Sort of like mini floating restuarants! Unfortunately, our boat driver took us to a weird coffee shop/restuarant/exotic animal prison. (They had monkeys tied to trees, alligators in tiny cages and other various sad looking creatures.) It seems like they always do that to you in Asia...you hire someone to do one thing for you and then they bring you around to all their friends and try to sell you a whole bunch of stuff you don't want. It was fun anyway though...the market was nice and at the animal prison we met a Vietnamese man who had an orchard, and he lets tourists do homestays with his family. It could be fun, staying with a Vietnamese family. It could also be very much NOT fun...I guess you would have to try it to find out. Honestly, I was slightly wary of Vietnamese people after Hanoi. In South Vietnam they were much more friendly, but not friendly enough to make me forget Hanoi!

After we visited the floating market, we had another long car trip to Rach Gia, where we boarded the ferry for Phu Quoc Island.


Stilt Houses


More Stilt Houses


Ladies Selling Fruit


Ladies Selling Pineapple


Matt Relaxing on Our Boat


Meagan on the boat heading towards the floating market near Can Tho


Relaxing at the Market

Christmas

Matt and I spent Christmas and Christmas Eve in Hanoi. For Christmas Eve we had a wonderful dinner at a French-Vietnamese restaurant called The Green Tangerine. It was so delicious, and the setting was gorgeous. The restuarant is in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, in an old French villa. We sat in the courtyard and had the set menu. I ordered a very curious dish: orange crusted prawns over a Curacao-soaked apple. The apple was bright blue and the prawns wer bright orange, so it looked like some sort of space-aged meal. It was delicious, but a bit on the sweet side. For dessert we had a baked apple stuffed with Camembert cheese. It was yummy!

For Christmas day, Matt and I drove ten kilometers out of town to a village that raises snakes. We had a ten course meal, with each course consisting of snake cooked in a different way. The highlight of the meal was when the owner brought the snake to our table and squeezed the blood out of it. He put the blood into a bottle of some type of strong alcohol, and we drank it. The owner took out the heart of the snake, which was still beating! He put it in Matt's glass, and Matt had to drink it for virility! I was very proud of Matt...even I would have been hesitant to drink it. It looked gross.


The church down the street from our hotel staged a huge dancing/singing performance on Christmas Eve. The whole street was blocked off and there were hordes of people. They had giant TV screens on three sides of the church showing the performance. It felt like a carnival or something!


Lots of people dressed up their kids like Santa, which made it feel even more like a carnival!


The courtyard of the Green Tangerine, where we had our Christmas Eve feast.


My bizarre yet delicious entree: orange crusted prawns on a Curacao-soaked apple

Hanoi

I went straight from Beijing to meet Matt in Hanoi. It was a lot colder than I expected...I still had to wear my winter coat from Beijing. Ugh! Hanoi was nice, and it felt so good to be out of school. We stayed at the Church Hotel on Nha Tho Street. We loved it! The people were friendly, and it was in a great location. We could walk to everything, and we were right in the middle of a cute shopping area. They left us a basket of fresh fruit every day and for breakfast they made exatly what you ordered...no buffet breakfast like most hotels. That was a good thing cause I usually don't like buffets.

Hanoi was alot more tourist oriented than I had expected. Everywhere we went there were packs of western tourists with giant cameras hanging from their necks, clutching their Lonely Planets. Yes, I know, Matt and I are tourists too...but somehow it detracted from the excitement of the place. Sadly, I did not find the Vietnamese there to be very friendly. They count on the cluelessness of tourists and try to chrge outrageous rates, all the while being very surly and having a mocking grin on their face. It is so different in Beijing, I now appreciate how friendly Beijing residents are. One woman tried to charge me 2 US dollars for one apple! That is alot when you consider than you can buy a whole meal for 50 cents. Even in the US I would not pay 2 dollars for one apple. I would not pay 2 dollars for a pound of apples! I don't mind paying "too much" for things when I am in other countries, that just comes along with travel, but I do mind paying outrageous prices and having then laugh in my face! Because of this negative attitude, I shopped primarily at the Western style boutiques, where there was a set price and everything is labeled. There were so many cute stores and about a kajillion art galleries. I bought some beautiful laquerware, and not much else. There was a lot of beautiful silk for sale and many silk and embroidered hand bags.

While we were in Hanoi, Matt and I did not see any sights. We spent our time enjoying each other and walking around and eating lots of yummy food. It seems like so long since Matt and I have had time to relax and be together. I was so happy knowing that after this trip, I would not be going away from Matt and missing him. If there is one thing that I learned in Beijing, it is that I definitely like my life a lot better when Matt is around. When we are living together he annoys me sometimes, but that is probably true with any couple...It annoys me a lot more when he is not around!


The Church Hotel


Matt and I at Hoan Kiem Lake, in the middle of Hanoi


A shop selling lacquerware


While we were in Hanoi, we saw a performance of the Water Puppets. Hanoi is famous for it, and it is something that all the tourists do. It was pretty good, and only cost three US dollars. The best part was that the show was accompanied by live music, and some of the traditional Vietnamese instrumentsare really cool. A whole band of musicians sat on the side and played music and narrated the performance.


Hanoi Opera House


I was very cold in Hanoi...I wore my winter coat the whole time!

Good Bye, Beijing

Now that I am leaving Beijing, I am very sad. I am leaving in less than one week...on Friday I fly to Hanoi to spend Christmas and New Year's Eve with Matt in Vietnam. I am extremely excited about going to Vietnam. I love the food, and I cannot wait to get out of the bitterly cold windy weather in Beijing. But, I now that I am leaving I keep thinking about everything I wanted to do but didn't do while I was here. I never went to the Antique Market, I never went to the Summer Palace, and I didn't really get out of the University District that much. Oh well, I guess this always happens when you are about to leave some place. I am pretty sure Matt and I will be back here next year, so I don't feel that bad. After I go to Vietnam, I will go back to Hong Kong with Matt and continue studying Mandarin at the City University of Hong Kong. I am really excited about Mandarin right now, because I feel like I am on the verge of a break through! When I think back to ho little I used to know, and how difficult it was for me to communicate, and compare it to how I am now, I feel very excited! In May, Matt and I will come back to the US for a while and then travel a little bit, maybe to India. Then, we are not sure what we are going to do.

I am very sad about my laptop crashing. Matt says it is really messed up and we may not be able to recover the data. That computer has all of my pictures of every place I have been for the past year! And, it has all of Dad's pictures! I am so sad. I would pay a lot to get that data back...Matt told me that it would teach me to back up things that are important to me. That is not very nice to say, cause I already feel very sad and stupid. I will definitely back things up next time. Luckily, I have at least some pictures on my blog, and some on MyYahoo photos. Unfortunately I never posted my Germany pictures, and they were so good!


My Class Mates at a Good Bye lunch



These are some of the students in my Sunday morning English class. I loved teaching English! Chinese kids are so nice and innocent! One of my students gave me a Christmas card and it said:
"Dear Meagan,
It is such a warm and beautiful world. Let's listen to the wishes from the
Earth and stretch our arms to welcome a hopeful year together.
Sincerely,
Laura"
How great is that? I am sad that I won't be teaching English any more...Maybe if Matt and I come back to China I will start teaching again. Also, notice how serious all of the students are in the picture. Chinese people don't seem to think that you should smile or look happy in pictures. All the kids were happy and smiling, and then as soon as I got out the camera, they turned into very serious, grim looking people.

Shanghai

Last weekend, I met Matt and some of our friends from Hong Kong in Shanghai. We were celebrating Kelly and Mel's birthdays, both of which are in the beginning of December. Kelly and Raul had told me how much they loved Shanghai, but I didn't really think much about it....It turns out they were right! It was the most beautiful, dynamic city I have seen in a long time. In fact, it is my favorite city in all of Asia! It has the best aspects of Beijing and Hong Kong combined into one city: there is a definite downtown area, with tall sky scrapers, and everythng is close together so taxi rides are never too long (unlike Beijing). The streets are lined with those big beautiful trees that arch over the road, and there are a ton of gorgeous, old buildings. You can definitely see the French influence on Shanghai, with old manor-style buildings and black wrought iron balconies and gates. The food was extremely good, and not too oily (like it is in Beijing). The clubs and bars are much more sophisticated than in Beijing, and the expats are younger than the ones in Hong Kong but cooler than the ones in Beijing. The prices are much easier to handle than those in Hong Kong, even at very nice bars and restaurants. Also, Shanghai is near the ocean, and somehow there is something much nicer about living close to a large body of water. Beijing is very far from the ocean and it can feel sort of closed in and stifling. I loved it in Shanghai! I would love to live in Shanghai one day. The only problem is, they speak a dialect of Chinese called Shanghainese, and it was very difficult for me to understand them even when they were speaking Mandarin.

Altogether there were 8 of us there: Kelly and Raul, Kelly's sister, Mel and John, Torry and Patrick, Payal, and Matt and I. We were staying in a gorgeous hotel right on the Bund. I felt like I was in heaven! Maybe I loved the hotel so much because I had just come from Beijing...in the hotel, the shower always had hot water, the room was warm and there was always electricity! In my apartment in Beijing, none of those things is guaranteed. Matt and I ordered room service for breakfast on Saturday and it was so delicious. They actually knew how to make Western food! I just had 2 fried eggs, sausage and toast, but it was the best breakfast that I can remember having since I went to visit Uncle Andrew in Minneapolis. On Friday night we went to a club called Bar Rouge, which was a lot of fun, despite the very blatant presence of many Chinese prostitutes. Here, the prostitutes were much more savvy and sophisticated than the ones in either Hong Kong or Beijing. They dressed much nicer than any of us and were not overly obvious about being working girls. It was very disturbing, actually. They weren't very nice. On Saturday we went shopping and out to a big lunch and dinner, then on Sunday we had a delicious brunch. Way too much eating in one weekend! We went to the antique market and the fabric market. I treated myself to white cashmere coat. (At least they told me it was cashmere. Well, it was cheap even if it wasn't real.) It was one of those weekends where I felt extremely happy the whole time. It made me very excited to go back to Hong Kong to be with Matt and all my friends!

Meagan in Shanghai

Kelly and Raul

Kelly's Sister, Courtney

Raul and the Door Lady at Our Hotel. I am not sure what their uniform is supposed to look like...

Aren't they cute with their matching umbrellas?

My New Cashmere coat from the Fabric Market