Day 6 - Shanghai (Day 2)

Day 6
Now that we knew the city, we were raring to go. Well at least after a good workout at the gym. I am finding that I am actually better off if I put in 20-30 min of cardio and some really good stretching. The days that I skip this, my legs are usually fatigued and tight much quicker in the day. We have definitely put in some walking time in China. We both have found it great to be able to just stroll around and feel safe.

We started the day going under the river on the Bund Sightseeing tunnel. We had read not to have high expectations, so we didn't. But just as the reviews said, it was something we wanted to do before leaving. The pictures show it best, dark tunnel with random neon lights.

Wow, what happened to the Smog! Today was the first day we have seen the sun. Until now, it looks as though it is a bright moon behind some clouds. Today, bright and sunny! Perfect as we were in Pudong, the financial district, to go up the Financial Tower. The cool thing was that they had built an elevated walk way for a few blocks in the middle of the financial district. This keep walkers and tourists off the street level. It was very clean and beautiful. It was definitely set up to show business travelers how prominent Shanghai is. The buildings and streets were well manicured.

I have always had a thing for architecture, so I am always excited to see a skyline or go up in the tallest buildings. The Shanghai Financial Center was no let down. They had well done multimedia as you progressed to the high speed elevator. What made this 100th floor viewing unique was that there was clear glass flooring down the middle and on the edges. Very eery to be 100 floors above ground and seeing through the floor. Pretty sure that Kristen's heart rate was about 75% max as we had to cross the glass a few times! We were soo lucky that the smog was the best for viewing today. Best does not mean it was not there or visible. The lower levels of smog allowed us for at least a decent viewing from above Shanghai.

We made our way back across the river via water taxi for a whopping $0.33 per person. We ate lunch at Yu Yuan Gardens at Nanxing Steamed Bun Restaurant where we once again found ourselves trying to order food with non English translation. It was Dim Sum style, so we just pointed to what looked good. We went two for four on taste. The bad thing about this is that we cannot reorder what was good as we have no idea what it was. We finished the meal with crab dumplings which is what they are known for. The dumplings explode with juices when you bite into them, very delicious.

We spent the afternoon walking around the old city and the French Conscessions. We walked past the biggest Burberry, Prada, Gucci, etc.. Stores. Enormous and glamorous store fronts. We loved walked in the French Concession (once we found it in the inner alleys). The French have a huge influence obviously in this area as they were early settlers before Shanghai became part of China. The little shops were fun to peruse. We sat down at an outdoor bar, selling German beer while blaring American rap music in the French Concession. We decided not to stay since the beers were $10 and it didn't feel right with that mix.

We made our way back to the hotel to get our laundry! We had it done at Laundry Express (once again advice from Trip Advisor). We had two loads done within 24 hrs for about $22. A steal compared to the Radisson which charged $5 for boxers alone!! We showered up and made our way to the Shanghai Circus World by subway.

We arrived about an hour early so we decided to look for dinner. There was a local place on the corner that was busy, so we braved it and went in. No English translation again, seems to be a theme. We pointed to two pictures, egg fried rice and lo mein noodles, and a bottle of Tsungtao (sing Tao) for $5! An American couple walked in after us and asked to sit with us since it was packed. We were excited to meet Americans as we have only met one American couple in China. They were on their "honeymoon" one year later. I think they were excited to meet Americans also as they both talked at the same time a hundred miles an hour. It helped make the dinner more comforting as the restaurant was all locals and filled with smoke.

Chinese people love their cigarettes! Holy cow and everywhere. Luckily, most of these interior spaces we traveled banned it.

The Shanghai Circus World was AWESOME. It was an acrobatic show that had to be the back up crew for the Chinese Olympic Gymnastic team. Each performance out did the previous. The last act had motorbikes circling the inside of a round globe. I had seen this before. However, when they had seven bikes going at once, it was unbelievable. Additionally, rarely was anyone strapped in for safety. We winced a few time as we thought someone was going to fall, but all was successful. It was a blast of two hours! No pictures as they were obviously restricted as it would be dangerous for flashes to occur at the top of a huge human hamster wheel.

We packed our bags for an early departure the next day to Cambodia.
Pictures of Shanghai. CLICK HERE

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Day 5 - Shanghai day 1

Day 5
Well the overnight train was a bit rougher than expected. The soft sleeper cars where like having a padded blue gym mat to sleep on. It was quiet though and I managed to get some decent sleep. My tailbone just might be bruised for a few days. We ended up getting a quad sleeper, so we had two others with us. Luckily they were pleasant and spoke Mandarin to each other. The one guy was my age and knew some English. He sold osprey and icebreaker outdoors gear which I had on. He called my hiking bag a "kite". I took the top bonk so KT could have the bottom. I put in my ear plugs and on my blackout soft shades and fell asleep before the lights were off. I was obviously tired.

The bathrooms were decent as they at least had a sink, soap, and towels. More than most we have been in thus far. Most bathrooms have been fairly clean but they do not provide soap or towels. Hand dryers are common, but soap is hard to come by.

We should be in Shanghai in about twenty minutes, but most of the train is still sleeping, so unsure when we actually arrive.

As we were preparing for arrival, the Chinese lady in our quad offered us both what looked like little cylinder pretzels (KT thought they looked like a medium sized nut). They were soft like bread with a nut in the middle. They tasted like what I would imagine cobwebs taste like. It was difficult to even get down. I made a face that clearly showed I did not enjoy. Kristen was much better and appeared to enjoy hers. Knowing her, I could not imagine how she enjoyed it, but hey, maybe she did. The lady ended up giving her a huge bag full as she looked as though she enjoyed them. She ate three more! The funny part is once we got off, I asked and she said they were awful! Lol. "Why in the world did you eat them and look like you enjoyed them?" She did not want to offend her. I obviously did not have a problem doing so. The trash can at the hotel ended up with a bag of some nasty cobweb tasting pretzel/nuts!

Shanghai (Shung-hi, as all locals call it) was close to my expectations. Huge buildings, convenient and well organized transportation systems, clean streets, and high end advertisements everywhere. However, the sky was still full of smog!

We checked into our hotel, Radisson Blu, which was located on People's Square right in the heart of it all. Nanjing road, a pedestrian road similar but smaller than Times Square, is where all of the tourism is that leads to the Bund. The Bund is a walkway along the Huangpo River over looking Pudong, the financial district of Shanghai. The smog really prevented the skyline from being beautiful. It was cool to see it compared to the colonial landscape at the Bund. However, it is definitely no NYC skyline. I did enjoy walking on the Bund as it was nice to be next to water. We walked to the old city of Shanghai to check out the traditional Shanghai housing and business district. Huge contrast. It felt like a cleaner Beijing street with every square foot used for business or living. The traditional markets sold everything from lace, buttons, gadgets, clothes, silk, all sorts of Chinese food, and on and on. It once again felt as if everything you would need to live was within two or three city blocks.

At the edge of the Old City, we walked past what looked like a rental wedding dress store. Very random. Especially since the lady was washing the dresses by hand on the sidewalk.

Walking around, I was pleased to see how well organized the city was laid out. It was super easy to walk around and explorer the new and old Shanghai. After miles of walking we made our way back to Peoples Square for an afternoon coffee. We settled on Starbucks as we welcomed some familiarity. Ironically, two coffees and a scone was the same price as two soups, a beer, and dumplings at lunch.

We made our way to the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum as I had read good reviews on Trip Advisor despite its boring name. I really enjoyed the museum as it outlined Shanghai's development plan to 2020 and it's goals. It was very well laid out, technology everywhere showing its plans, a 3D video on the city and a huge model of the city's landscape. The hard part for us was believing everything that they said they were going to do. There was much talk about being environmentally responsible,etc... But no real substance on how they were going to accomplish. It will be interesting to see if they become the top international city they aspire to be. They definitely have the abilities and money. Not sure if they really want to pay for it to be done appropriately.

We decided to shower and walk back down the Nanjing to check out the skyscape at night. We ate again at a traditional Chinese restaurant. Funny story here...it was packed when we walked in with very little English translation. The waitress brought is to a table with four chairs, where two people were already eating. Kristen slide right in and I joined her. The awkwardness felt like minutes as we had no idea what to do. We were being seated with what looked like a Chinese couple on a date. Luckily another waitress was cleaning another table by the window and waved us over. Phew, awkwardness averted! We learned that just one pepper on the spice chart next to the vegetable soup equals about three in the States. Crab dumplings are the best. And just because the menu says crab or vegetable, there is always some sort of meat in the dish. And it is almost always impossible to determine what kind of meat. We have just decided to skip meat in China. All of you meat lovers, I would bet you would make the same choice. Again, we had beer, two bowls of spicy vegetable soup and crap dumplings for $10! Loving how cheap it is in China, if you eat at non-western establishments.

Pudong is definitely more beautiful at night. Not sure if the light rain reduced the smog or the lights look better against the darker skies. We snapped some pictures before heading back to our hotel for some drinks at the 47th floor. The one cool thing worth noting here was seeing a business traveler from England facetiming his wife and daughter. He was showing them the view from above.

 

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Day 4 - Xian

Day 4

Day in Xian. (She-en) I was expecting a small rural city in Xian after leaving the 27.6 million people of Beijing. I was shocked to learn that Xian has 8 million people. This was obvious as soon as we got off the train. Xian would be equivalent to our NYC by population. Xian is definitely a step up on the higher quality scale. I anticipate Shanghai to be another step up. Xian was very pleasant to walk around so we decided to wonder out and find breakfast.

 

Everyone walking around was eating street vendor breakfast. Picture pancake/pita with vegetables, meat and eggs wrapped in it. It looked and smelled delicious. However, we decided not to try since it is advised against eating anything uncooked. After about 30 minutes, we settled on Dico's which felt like a cheap McDonalds. KT had egg soup and a potato cake/egg sandwich and I the corn soup and same sandwich. We split what looked like a doughnut. Holy cow, it puts Krispy Kremes to shame. It was awesome. The whole breakfast felt Western despite it obviously not being so.

We hired a taxi to take us to the old city wall and to the Terra-cotta warriors. First stop was to the wall where we rode the ~10 mile circumference on top of the old wall. Very cool for the first 45 minutes. It was a great way to explore the way Chinese people live and there homes. We in essence where riding bikes at the 3rd story level. However, it got a bit hard after awhile as we were riding rusty chained bikes on uneven bricks. However, it was an awesome experience to ride on an old wall.

 

When we finished, an entire Chinese family asked to take their picture with us. Interesting, the females wanted a picture of KT and the men with me. We got a lot of camera shots and stares today. I am guessing being much more "rural" caused this.

 

We made our way to the Terrracota warriors after an hour taxi ride. Upon getting out of the car, we were immediately asked by a very well English spoken tour guide if we wanted a guide. We had not planned on it but decided to go for it. Ended up being the best decision we made today. Not only was she able to teach us efficiently about the warriors she answered all of our questions that we had about China.

 

The warriors were unbelievable. I am not going to tell their entire story on here but an Emperor had about ~8,000 slaves, soldiers, generals, and horses (an entire army) made out of Terracota clay under ground to protect him in his after life. All workers were eventually killed to keep it a secret until a random farmer in 1976 found a buried soldier when digging for water. Unbelievable to see these in real life and learn soo much of China's history.

 

We learned soo much from the tour guide. She clarified that the horrific pollution and smog problem has gotten worse over the past few years with soo much increased factory work. It was just reported that factory output continues to grow in China. The air was soo horrible that Kristen has had trouble breathing at some moments. Check out this article that we just read:

 

http://world.time.com/2013/10/21/kids-get-smog-day-as-pollution-shuts-down-chinese-city/

 

The air pollution is unbelievable. The factories, the coal being burnt, and the car emissions all contribute. Us in the states recycling newspapers is just a bandaide on the global pollution problem. I am not going to go on and on, but seeing the unacceptable air quality is eye opening. There are huge mountains and sky scrapers here and you can barely see them unless you are within 1/8 mile from them.

 

Another topic worth describing from today is irony from planning and being flexible.

Had we realized the Xian wall was only a few blocks from our hotel, we would have visited first thing in the morning vs paying a taxi to wait on us. However, had we went earlier, we would not have been able to ride bikes on the wall as there was a marathon that morning. Additionally, we wanted to go to the warriors first then ride bikes on the wall. However, the driver didn't want to battle traffic both ways, which we agreed. Had we done it in our order, we would not have run into the EXACT same OSU grads that we pictured on the Great Wall. How crazy to run into them twice in China in two different cities a 5 hr train ride away?! Additionally, had we not gotten the guide at the warriors as we originally planned on doing the tour without, we would have taken twice as long to learn half as much. What a great experience we had with her today. Not only learning about the warriors but about life as a Chinese citizen.

 

Leaving today makes me happy to be American. Our country is not perfect, but holy cow is it great compared to China. We get to be whatever we want when we grow up. Corruption is at a whole other level here. The rich are super rich and the poor are super poor. It is virtually impossible to become rich if your family isn't already. The government owns all of the land and citizens who build on their land only have rights to the building for 70 years! We also learned that it is virtually impossible to have more than one child in China as the tax on a second is only possible if super rich.

 

We board an overnight train to Shanghai in 2 hours. Hoping that we are booked in a double sleeper instead of a quad sleeper! I am pumped to see a "newer", cleaner, and more advanced Chinese city. At least that is my perception.

Xian pictures click here

 

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Day 3/4 - Beijing

Day 3

Today started early with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast. Neither of us could stomach another fish based soup and we wanted some energy for our Great Wall hike. We hired a private car for the day, 8 hrs for 700 RMB or about $115. This is signifantly more expensive than the $0.30 train rides we have been taking. However, the less touristy spot on the wall was 1.5 hr drive and we wanted to be there when the gates opened to take advantage of beating the tour buses. This paid off. We were able to walk right to the cable car and right on the Great Wall. We hiked west on the wall until it was no longer up-kept. We hiked about 1/4 mile longer but realized it was unsafe. The Great Wall was absolutely amazing. It is very hard to imagine how in the world people built these walls over 1,000 years ago. It would have been a feat on level ground but unfathomable with the steep cliffs.

After turning back, we ran into two people wearing OSU shirts, so we stopped to take an O-H-I-O pose. Pretty cool.

 

We were able to hike out and back in about 2.5 hrs, so we still had time. We decided to hike to the farthest East end of the up-kept wall. We couldn't figure out how far this exactly was, but the picture was awesome to take from where we came from. Even 1.5 hrs out of the city, the smog was still present. You could barely see where we had made our first turn around. The pictures do not do it justice as the terrain was unbelivable. The steps were uneven and some of the walking areas were ramps vs steps. The second part of the hike brought beautiful fall colors. It was different hiking in the fall as most pictures show the Wall with green trees. That perspective would have been neat also as the Wall would have stood out in the distances.

We hiked just above the four Chinese characters way in the distance, which is about 1.5 miles from this point. It sure did feel longer than a 3 mile hike.

 

We made it back to the parking lot at about 1:00, so we had enough time for the driver to take us to the Olympic Village. This was cool to see since it is so recent. We walked around the Village and were unimpressed with the amount of dirt, rust, and over all smog. During the Olympics, Beijing put on a ban on the amount of drivers so the smog would clear. It definitely made a huge difference. The amount of smog got worse each day we were here. My thought is that it gets worse throughout the work week with all of the driving cars. We are on the train right now to Xian and you cant even see 1/4 mile from the train. We expected the smog to get better as we left Beijing but we are over 200 miles west by now and it seems to be worse.

 

I really did enjoy seeing the Cube and the Birds Nest. I could only imagine the electricity that was in the air during the opening ceremony.

 

We made it back to the hotel at about 4:00. We both were beat and quickly showered from a sweaty and smoggy day. At about 4:30, we decided to take a 10 minute nap. Guess we should have set an alarm. At 7:30 a wrong number called our room and woke us up. Neither could get out of bed and I remember seeing 10:30 and then again 2:00. We both tossed and turned from 2:00-3:30 before getting up to work out and start the day. Sounds weird to type, but we were fully rested. I am expecting 3:30 natural wake ups to go away at some point.

 

Day 4

After an easy cardio session and stretching, we ate would could be our second breakfast at 7:30. Our first was a PB and J and banana split between us at 3:30 and our second was across the street from our hotel. We shared a warm egg noodle like soup, a long unsweetened doughnut like bread, and egg fried rice. Our best breakfast yet. That breakfast was $7 compared to what would have been $60 for a Western breakfast at the hotel.

 

We stocked up on supplies at the neighboring 24 hr mart. Aquafina bottled water was 1.3 RMB. At a 6 RMB to 1 USD exchange, water is a cheap $0.22 per bottle. We bought peanut butter, crackers, bread, chocolate spread, and chocolate cookies for the train ride lunch and dinner. All for 48 RMBs or $8.

 

We started the day on the subway to the Beijing Zoo. I was excited to see the Giant Pandas. They did not disappoint. Very cool to watch. All four were eating, so no exciting play time. The rest of the zoo was very very disappointing as the exhibits where the animals were housed were not maintained to American quality. PETA would be rioting if they saw the poor conditions. We saw the polar and black bears and left.

 

We made our way to the Temple of Heavens. It appeared to be close on the map, but it took us over an hour from the zoo. They were charging more to see it and neither of us were excited to pay to see a temple. We decided to experience the Beijing bus which is very different from the subway. We had read that the buses were not for tourists as there is no English and they are not as well cleaned and maintained. We road it for a few blocks before it randomly turned off the road we wanted to be on. A very cool experience. The ride was 1 RMB per person. Each subway ride was 2 RMBs. Getting around Beijing has proven to be very cheap. Most areas in the subway have signs in both Chinese and English. The amount of people is about a constant NYC rush hour.

 

After packing up for our Beijing exit, we made our way via subway and bus to the bullet train to take us to Xian. We got some weird looks as no other people thus far on our journey were walking around with a backpack on their backs and stomachs! Despite easy to navigate subways, the bullet train was difficult to find. Luckily we found an English speaking gentlemen who pointed us in the right direction.

 

Despite English being translated on much of the signage throughout Beijing, I was shocked at how little people actual spoke. Most of the people that we ran into spoke no English at all. However, most were pleasant to interact with even without verbal communication. We found that most people were very friendly, welcoming and helpful. We felt safe the entire time despite getting weird looks. Kristen was the only celebrity as two Chinese girls at the a Great Wall asked for their picture with her. I was also surprised that the Chinese were taller than I expected. I had the perception that they were all short, but that did not hold to be true. I would be interested in knowing the actual average heights between US and Chinese citizens.

 

All in all, Beijing was a great experience. The way that citizens live their lives is so different. Some of the city is in hutongs which are self sufficient. Others live in hire rise towers. It doesn't appear that people leave the surrounding area from their hutong. Each hutong has different shops that have all life's necessities. The smog is legit here. After spending three days in it, I am happy to leave it. I have no doubt that Beijing has an effect on the ozone. The sun was "shinning" all days, but you can see from the pictures that it never comes out. It only shines about as bright as a full moon in the US. The Great Wall was amazing to see and walk on, the Chinese culture was so very different than that in the US, and the Olympic Village was cool to see in person.

 

Our train ride to Xian is somewhat interesting. I was expecting to see the country side, but the smog only allows about a 1/4 mile view. We just passed a city about 250 miles from Beijing that is being built all new. There were about 30 new sky scrapers being built. It appeared that no one was living there at the moment as it was all under construction. Seems like a great idea to try and move people out of Beijing. On to Xian and the Terra-cotta Warriors for a night.

Beijing pictures click on the link https://picasaweb.google.com/101721597279495771132/Beijing03?noredirect=1

 

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The start of our journey

Day 1

Our flight to Beijing was uneventful. We had a four hour layover in Toronto from Cleveland. The one cool thing worth noting was that in the international terminal, all of the sitting areas had two iPads on a each table. You could order food or drinks, check flights, or surf the the web. All was free to use and the internet was fast, much faster than getting the free wifi onto my own ipad.

I was able to switch our seats the day before so we had seats in a two seat row. No one to climb over for the bathroom! I use SeatGuru to find info on good and bad seats.

We navigated the subway fairly easily in Beijing to our hotel. We had to make three transfers, but only cost ~$4 per person for the ride.

We both were exhausted even though it was 7:45 pm when we got to our room. We unpacked and hit the sack by 8:15.

 

Day 2

Early rise! We both were wide awake at 3:00 am. We got up, KT went to the gym and I tried to get the wifi and safe to work. After success, I joined KT. It was actually surprised at the facilities. An easy place to get the heart rate up and stretch after a 13 hr flight the day before. We both successfully fell back asleep from 5-7.

We decided to jump right in to the Chinese food culture and skipped the $30 Western hotel breakfast for authentic across the street. We thought we ordered the doughnut looking item, but ended up just with the soup. Which by the way was made from a fish broth and had little prawns in them with fish filled dumplings. It was surprisingly okay. We also got tomato scrambled eggs and some other random dumplings. It was better than I originally thought it would be, but I knew it was going to be a rough breakfast week.

We started the day off at Tiananmen Square, where yes just two days prior there was a terrorist attack. This is hard to confirm with Communist China able to control the media's message. There was no signs of any problems, fires from the days prior, or anything. If we hadn't read the news we would have never known. There were tons of police officers and military around, but nothing I didn't expect. Either way, the entire city feels safe to walk around and check out all of the sights Beijing has to offer.

The Square was enormous as expected, but the Forbidden City was more impressive. The space was huge and it was awesome to see things built (and rebuilt) from the 1600s. It was beautiful despite there being a solid coat of dust on everything. It was interesting that you could physically touch soo much as much of the city was not preserved as you would expect.

We both were hungry for lunch, but the smell of fish didn't make much appetizing. Additionally, we were in a more local area of town with no English translations on the menu. We decided to wait in a long line for nuts. We managed to order a bag of cashews and peanuts despite no one around knowing English. It continues to amaze me how we can communicate what we need by simply pointing and making gestures.

We made an impromptu decision to jump on a rickshaw and tour a hutong (back alley) which is how the people lived in Beijing for centuries and many still do. This was an unbelievable experience as this is where some of the impoverished reside out of sight from the main road. It was filthy and dirty, but eye opening. The craziest thing was that you would see one nice car sitting outside of each residence, Audi A6 seemed to be popular. There was soo much pollution and dust in the air, it was hard to imagine clothes actually being clean that we're hanging to dry. It appeared that most residents shared one community bathroom, which was ironically the nicest part of the hutong from the outside. The ride couldn't come quick enough. It was on our list to do, but I was happy when it ended. It left you feeling a need for a shower.

We took the mile walk back to the hotel as we spent our remaining cash on the the rickshaw. We decided to get some chores accomplished. I had ordered a Chinese SIM card from some random front hotel staff member. The guy was great. He even ran back and exchanged for a micro SIM card for my iPhone 4S. Verizon was able to have Apple unlock my phone temporarily while we are out of the country. I now have a Chinese cell phone! This was important so we can call our driver tomorrow when we want to be picked up from the Great Wall.

We had learned from watching Samantha Brown's travel show on the airplane that there were some cool evening markets. The one extreme market was only two blocks from our hotel. Here we could have eaten deep fried starfish, snakes, sea horses, all kinds of insects, and many unrecognizable items. Many of the insects were moving right before they were cooked. I would have tried something, but there was no guarantee that I wouldn't get sick. It wasn't worth the gamble. We watched others eat these while we tried a dough like ball which tasted like a carnival elephant ear.

All excursions are booked. Full day at the Great Wall tomorrow, followed by five hour bullet train to Xian the following day to see the Terra-cotta Warriors before heading to Shanghai.

I do want to note that Facebook and social media is blocked in China, which means that tourists are included. This seems to be the only Communist "rule" that I have noticed thus far in our trip.

Update: they allow social media in Southern China. I am guessing this was canned to encourage business in Shanghai.

Pictures to come once they all load. Only 7 did overnight.

 

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Top 10 experiences (anticipated)

Today is Day 1 of 80. Kristen asked me this morning what I was most excited for on the trip. I quickly answered spending the next 80 days with her. She clarified and asked what experience was I most looking forward to. I answered hiking on a glacier as I never dreamed of doing such. However, when showering I began to think about all of the other cool things that we are going to experience. I thought it would be cool to rank the top ten anticipated experiences that we were looking forward to. Then when we finish, we would rank what our top ten actually were.

Here is my list:

10. Drinking Malbec wine in Mendoza, Argentina

10. Drinking Malbec wine in Mendoza, Argentina

 

9. Cruising the Strait of Magellan

8. Hiking the Great Wall of China

7. Floating down the Mekong Delta with my pointed hat on

6. Hiking the W trek in Torres del Paine

5. Playing with the animals in the Galapagos

4. Scuba diving the shipwreck Tulamben in Bali

3. Swimming in the infinity pool on top Marina Bay Hotel in Singapore

2. Hiking on a glacier in Tierra del Fuego in Ushuaia

1. Bringing in the New Year at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro

Here is Kristen's independent ranked list:

10. Spending one night in Bangkok

9. Relaxing on a beach in Phuket, Thailand

8. Playing with wildlife in Galapagos

7. Hiking in Patagonia

6. Drinking Malbec in Mendoza

5. Going outside my comfort zone and routine

4. Spending 80 days with Jake

3. Boating on the Mekong Delta with a Vietnamese hat

2. Eating local food in each country

1. Climbing the Great Wall of China

80 days until we see what turns out to be reality... Let the journey begin!

 

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How to pack for an Around the World Trip...

The most common question that I have received thus far is: "How do you pack for an 80 day trip around the world?"  Well, great question.  We have researched this and read many blogs on the topic.  A few things about our trip make it interesting:
1) We will have beach time on the equator while also hiking on glaciers.  Thus, we have to pack for the wide range of temperatures.
2) We decided that we did not want to have to check our bags when flying, so we were only going to bring enough items that would fit into carry on packs.
3) We will spend part of the trip hiking in Patagonia, so we needed to be able to hike with our packs.

We ultimately decided to buy hiking packs that we could strap on our shoulders.  We went with the biggest hiking pack you can check on an airplane: Osprey Atmos 50 for our main pack.  We also went with a +The North Face Angstrom 28 for our personal carry on to place under the airplane seat and to take during the day when we are exploring.  These two packs will hopefully maximize our potential space.  Both packs allow for a Camelpak hydration bladder, are very light weight and have minimal outside access to avoid being pick pocketed.

You may be able to see that both packs are quite full.  I am going to attempt to itemize what is in each pack.

My best attempt to get all of the items in my big pack.  

 8L dry bag: +The North Face 800 down winter jacket and rain pants.  Wool hat and synthetic mask.

 4L dry bag:  One synthetic Columbia base layer top, two base layer bottoms and +The North Face gloves

 4L dry bag: 10 pairs of Exificio travel underware

 3L dry bag: 6 pairs of underarmor synthetic socks, 2 pairs of crew +smartwool  socks, 3 pairs of Fits microwool sock liners

 8L dry bag: 4 synthetic workout shirts and shorts.

 20: Dry bag: 2 pairs of +The North Face hiking pants that zip into shorts, 1 pair of +Nike dryfit golf pants, 1 pair of +Nike dryfit golf shorts, 1 pair of Columbia hiking shorts, 1 pair of swim trunks, 1 exificio long sleeve button down, 1 +smartwool long sleeve shirt, 2 +Icebreaker Merino wool t-shirts, 1 +Nike golf polo, 1 button down short sleeve shirt

3L dry bag: 2 workout bands, 1 head lamp, 1 pair of goggles

 All of my clothes into dry bags before filling up my big pack.

Small pack: all paper work and passports, inflatable pillow, +LifeProof iphone case, Camelback water bottle, +Go Pro camera with headstrap, microfiber towel, toiletries, medicines, first aid, +Canon Cameras, ipad/iphone charge, sunglasses with croakies, deck of cards, ear plugs, iphone, and ipad. 

Kristen got both of the same packs, but in different colors.  We often comment when couples wear the same outfits, etc... yet we did the samething.  Hard to buy two different products after much research and shopping went into finding what we believe will work.  

You will most definitely see us wearing the same clothes and most likely they will be wrinkled.  

It will be interesting to see at the end of 80 days, what we needed more of and what we could have left behind.

Wheels up in 4 days!