Brief weekend in Beijing

Beijing (7/27 – 7/29/07)

Since the flights to Asia are so long, work gives us an extra day to fly there and get acclimated to the time change, etc. We left Chicago on Thursday to fly to Beijing for the weekend. Unfortunately we got stuck on a flight that consisted of a school group of probably 50 Chinese kids who maybe had never flown before but definitely had no respect for the other passengers or even flight attendants. These high school age kids were climbing over seats, leaving things in the aisle-way, leaning over our seats to talk to eachother rows away. Very obnoxious and didn’t allow many people to sleep on the plane. Luckily sleep was not in my agenda. I had bought the 7th Harry Potter book with the intention of reading it on the plane and I got through ~600/700 pages on our 13 hour flight. I probably took about a 30-minute nap during the whole time we were in the air. I finished the book by Friday night. It was pretty ridiculous, but you know once I start reading a good book, I won’t put it down until I’m finished. Anyways, so Team Japan (as we like to call ourselves) consists of 9 auditors, 6 girls and 3 guys. The group that went to Beijing was 5 girls and 1 guy – the newbies (Holly and Eric) of course were excited to go on every weekend excursion so they were part of our Beijing group. We arrived in Beijing and caught a taxi van to get to our hotel (Marriott Apts). By the time we arrived at the hotel and freshened up, we all just wanted some dinner and then to get some rest for our trip to the Great Wall early Saturday morning. We had the concierge arrange for a van to pick us up at 8am and drive us 2 hours to get to the Great Wall – Simatai section. So let’s start with Friday:

Friday – 7/27/07
We arrived at our hotel (the executive apts) and checked in – all the girls stayed in one apartment that consisted of 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a living room, dining area, kitchen and even a laundry room. It was pretty sweet! I called the smallest bedroom so I could have a room to myself J. Not to be anti-social, but I know from experience that one of the girls snores pretty badly and didn’t want to get stuck in a room with her. This also allowed me to have my own bathroom…and anyone who knows me, knows that I hate sharing bathrooms ;-). Eric got his own room cause we had enough in the budget and didn’t want to stick him with 5 girls for the entire weekend – for his sanity’s sake. After we all freshened up, we asked the hotel concierge where we should eat. Basically what’s a good restaurant nearby where they speak English. We didn’t really have it in us to try to communicate to someone who didn’t speak English. He suggested the South Beauty and wrote down the information in Chinese for us to give our cab driver. Since there were so many of us, we had to take 2 separate cabs. Since I had money and Kathleen had money, we took the 2 separate cabs and Sonia and Eric came with me while the other 2 girls went with Kathleen. We arrived at the huge department store and our cab driver told us that the restaurant was “in there” (basically just pointing and said something in Chinese). We also found a group of teenage girls who spoke English and they confirmed that the restaurant was inside the 5 story department store somewhere.
This department store was ridiculously huge and so we go up escalator after escalator walk around each floor and even ask several employees of the department store where this restaurant was. No one seemed to be able to help us but 1 woman pointed to a general direction on the 2nd floor and said it was over there. We walked in that direction and Sonia walked over to it and said it was only a Manicure/Pedicure place, so we continued on. We even went down to the information desk and they didn’t seem to be much help because of communication issues. After about 45 minutes of this, we almost gave up and were about head to the nearest restaurant when Sonia asked one more employee. This woman pointed out in the same direction as the other and said it was “over there”. Sonia was determined to find this place so she actually told the woman to walk us there (sort of grabbing her arm, which I thought was pretty rude). But the woman complied and walked us to the same Mani/Pedi place but when you walk a little further, you see that the restaurant WAS there!! It was against the wall, connected to the department store but not actually IN the store. DUH! How stupid did we feel?? So we go inside and the other 3 girls were there and had already started eating…craziness! But we were able to order and I actually got this great shrimp and pineapple dish! Yummm. Finally after dinner we headed back to the Marriott for some rest before our next adventure. One thing is for sure – no matter where we go, there’s an adventure waiting for us overseas!

Saturday 7/28/07

So we get up early Saturday morning and pack up some gear for our journey. Me being the “Mom”, packed the most – food supplies, wet wipes, a towel, some reading material for the drive up there, and of course my I Pod. Kathleen and I picked up some bottles of water for everyone from a nearby grocery store too. We were all pretty awake on the drive up there so we whipped out our China and Japan tour books and did some reading as well as this Joke Book that my friend Aman had bought me before we left. Thanks for the books Aman! We opted to go to this area of the Great Wall called Simatai as it was less touristy than the Badaling area.

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/china_great_wall/scene/beijing/simatai.htm

We also went out on our own without a tour guide. We get to the ticket office and couldn’t even figure out how to get up to the top from where we were, so we bought tickets to ride a cable car up to almost the top. It dropped us off and we still had a good 30 min. hike to reach the Wall itself. It was a pretty steep incline but we didn’t come here for nothing! Also as our luck seems to be, the weather was really cloudy and foggy so we couldn’t see much. However, it could’ve been much worse! As hot as it was, it would have been ridiculously hot if it was sunny outside! As you’ll see in the pictures, we were all drenched with sweat by the time we got to the top.

Kathleen and Holly were rockstars and were the first to reach the top. Eric and Shannon were next and Sonia had to keep stopping, so I waited with her and we took our time climbing to the top. We finally had made it and the rest of the group was catching their breath and waited for us before exploring the area. Sonia wasn’t too interested in going anywhere so she just stayed at the base level while the rest of us continued to go up stairs and see what else was around. Holly actually turned around at one point to get Sonia cause she thought Sonia might enjoy seeing what we did. She was a good motivater, but Sonia definitely hated her at the time J. The rest of the group wanted to try to hike up to a much higher level of the wall, but didn’t get too far when the area was roped off and the guard said that it was illegal to go there.

- the "illegal" part of the Wall

I think we could’ve paid him off, but that part of the wall definitely didn’t look like it had been even the slightest bit renovated or safe for that matter. So back we went. We checked out the other side and got some pictures, but you couldn’t go much further, so we then proceeded to head back down.

Again, we couldn’t figure out any other way to get back to the ground from where the cable car would pick us up so we enjoyed the relaxing trip down via cable car. We reached the bottom, welcomed by a row of street vendors trying to sell us various Great Wall paraphernalia and by our van driver who waited there for us. We all passed out on the drive home. We reached our hotel around 3 or 4pm and most of us were just exhausted from both the Great Wall and from jet lag, so we took naps, planning to wake up for dinner around 8pm. Since we were so tired, we didn’t want to venture out for food and just ordered delivery…not only was it delivery, but it was Italian food at that. I know I know, slightly disappointing, but I wasn’t feeling too adventurous with Chinese food after so many articles and news reports on the quality of Chinese food. Also I didn’t want to take the chance of getting sick before even getting to Japan. Turns out both Kathleen and I ended up sleeping until the next morning! Holly, being the ball of energy she is, didn’t want to take a nap so she ventured out to the New Market while we all slept and did some MAJOR shopping. She came back around 8pm expecting us all to be ready for dinner but of course, we weren’t. She got a ton of really great stuff from there, but I still preferred my sleep to shopping. Sonia and Shannon felt bad that Holly wanted to go out to get a drink and was going to venture out by herself again, so they went with her. Apparently they had another little adventure trying to find some restaurant/bar that was in Sonia’s Beijing book and ended up going to the nearby Outback for appetizers and drinks after searching for this other place for 30 min.

Sunday – 7/29/07

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square

Our flight to Tokyo was scheduled to leave around 2pm, so we had the morning to do some exploring. I woke up the next morning at 5am feeling extra refreshed! We all got ready and headed to the Tiananmen Square area to check it out and then to the nearby Forbidden City before coming back to the hotel to get our luggage and then getting to the airport. The amount of tourists at Tiananmen Square was crazy, but pretty funny too. Since Eric is 6’7”, he looks like he could be a famous American basketball player. Every few minutes some family or group would come up to him asking to take their picture with him. The girls and I all got a kick out of it until for some reason, someone wanted to take their picture with me. Kinda random, but sure why not. Then someone else asked Kathleen the same. All very confusing but it was really cute. Eric even had to turn down a few pictures since he kept falling behind the rest of the group. We walked through the Square and into the Forbidden City. As we were short on time, we couldn’t do a guided tour or even go thru all of the buildings, but we walked around, took some pictures and bought a few souvenirs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City

By 11, we caught a couple cabs, headed to the hotel and had to split 2 people to a cab because we had so much luggage each. Kathleen and I went in one, Sonia and Shannon and then Holly and Eric. Mind you, Holly and Eric are both new (just started about a week before leaving for Japan) and have COMPLETELY opposite personalities. I could probably discuss this for days, but all I’ll say is that it can be both entertaining and frustrating at times. Kathleen and I couldn’t find the rest of the group but weren’t worried since we were all taking the same flight to Tokyo. We took our time and grabbed some lunch at this cute restaurant called “Lucky something”. They had everything from American burgers, to some sort of “Irish” food to Chinese food and even pizza. We opted for burgers and they were actually pretty good. We checked out a few shops along the way and had also been given access to the Business Lounge, so we hung out there for a while before the flight. This flight was much better than the previous one. It was cool cause we could actually watch on our TV’s as the plane took off. We also had a much better selection of movies and I FINALLY was able to watch Spiderman 3! Pretty good, but too focused on the “love” part…I’m not a big fan of Kirsten Dunst, so that didn’t impress me too much. All in all a good flight. We get to Tokyo and take the Airport Limousine (a huge shuttle bus) to our Hotel Okura and check-in around 11pm Sunday night.
- Forbidden City (Imperial Garden)
We were extremely busy this past week at work as there is much work to be done in 5 weeks. I also had to balance that with trying to plan things for our Mt. Fuji trip the following weekend as there were 5 of us going (same group as the Great Wall minus Kathleen). That’s a WHOLE OTHER story…which is about to follow.

5 weeks in Japan

Just a quick update before I leave for the next 5 WEEKS!

I'm heading out this Thurs - 7/26 and my team ("Team Japan" as we like to call ourselves) is stopping in Beijing to see the Great Wall on our way to Tokyo. I'm pretty excited about it - I think we're gonna go to the Si Ma Tai portion of the Wall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simatai

We get to Tokyo Sunday night (7/29) and have a pretty busy 5 weeks of work.
I'll be staying in Tokyo for the first 3 weeks (7/29 - 8/17) and then in Osaka for the last 2 weeks (8/17 - 8/29) and returning to Tokyo for the last 2 days (8/29 - 8/31)

For my first weekend in Japan, I plan to hike up Mt. Fuji via the "night hike" - starting my climb around 9pm to reach the summit in time for the sunrise at 4:30am. Don't worry, I'm not alone - a few of my co-workers are coming with me! After hanging out at the top for a bit and enjoying the sunrise, we'll head back down the mountain and get back to our hotel in Tokyo where I'll probably pass out for the rest of the weekend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt_fuji

Our second weekend in Japan will be spent in Tokyo as it's a long weekend, Oban, and we have 2 days off from work - woohoo!! I'll just be exploring the city, etc.

The third weekend I'll be heading to Osaka early and will probably spend most of my weekend in Kyoto since it's pretty close in distance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto,_Japan

For my fourth and final weekend, I'm flying to Hong Kong to visit my friend Vishnu and hang out in the city.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_kong

I'll be back in Chicago on Sept. 1, just in time to start packing up again to move into my very first condo!

So that's my brief itinerary for the next month or so...I'll try to keep you updated weekly after each of my weekend adventures with pictures and all!

FYI - Japan is 14 hours ahead of CST.

Take care and I'm usually online so keep in touch!
Ambika

Gorgeous Greece! 6/22 - 6/24/07

So this weekend Rafael and I took a side trip to Athens, Greece. 2 days isn't nearly enough time but it gave us a little taste of the area. I definitely wanted to do some sort of cruise to check out the islands, so there was a 1-day cruise available that went to 3 islands in the Saronic Gulf.

Friday, June 22

So tonight we got to the hotel around 10pm from the airport, got ready and headed out to a restaurant called Central – suggested to me by Lily, my co-worker. This restaurant was located in the Kolonaki Square area, but turned out to be closed by the time we got there. Kolonaki Square is a huge shopping area with lots of great designer stores. Good thing we went there late because I probably could’ve spent wayyyy too much money there. We had walked around the area for a while and couldn’t find Central, so finally we asked someone and he told us it was closed. We ended up grabbing something quick to eat at one of the 24-hour cafes nearby. There were still quite a few people out and about around the time we were eating (midnight or so). We thought there would be more to do in the area – bars, nightclubs, etc. but after asking our waitress, we apparently were in the wrong area for that. Most of the places to go out were in Psiri. By the time we finished eating around 1am, Rafael and I were both pretty tired so we just headed back to the hotel since we had to get up around 6am for our day-cruise on Saturday!

Saturday, June 23

Rafael and I took a one-day cruise that we reserved on Key Tours set up by our concierge at the Marriott where we stayed. Because we were only in Athens for the weekend, it was too short of a time period to go very far to many islands. This one-day cruise was perfect because we stayed in the Saronic Gulf area and hit up 3 islands: Poros, Hyrdra, and Aegina. The boat was packed with people of all different cultures and age groups…especially interested to watch was this group of high school kids who were on a summer trip from somewhere in the States. I’ll come back to this in a bit. So the boat had multiple levels inside and outside and because the weather was so great, Rafael and I spent most of our time on the boat on the top level to enjoy the scenery and weather. The first trip took about 2 hours to get to Poros where we were given about 45 minutes to walk around, shop, explore, etc. It was a cute little island (the smallest of the 3) that had a lot of souvenir shops and this beautiful clock tower at the top. The 3 islands we went too had a small community of people which basically made a living off tour groups and vacationers visiting the islands. So we hiked up to the top of Poros to see the clock tower and check out the view of the surrounding area. It was just like what you’d imagine a Greek Island to be, mountainous with narrow stairway paths to get to the various houses on the island. There were very few cars and most people transported items via horse or donkey. Pretty old school but very endearing. It was an extremely hot day and turned out to be a record-breaking HOT weekend in Athens, reaching 105 farenheit on Sunday.

The second island that we went to was Hydra. Another cute island very similar to Poros. We had 1 ½ hours here and didn’t really feel like doing much shopping. There was a swimming area here that a lot of people went to and with the day getting hotter by the minute – I ended up there as well. The water was so beautiful that I just had to jump in…and did I! As we walking to the swimming area, I saw the high school kids jumping off the cliff and into the water about 75 feet below. It looked like so much fun and I figured – hey, if these kids can do it why can’t I? Sometimes a good mentality and sometimes not…but that’s me! So first I wanted to check out the temperature of the water to see if it was ridiculously cold, but it felt great considering the weather outside. Rafael just hung out at the restaurant nearby and enjoyed a fruit smoothie while I ventured up to the Cliffside and proceeded to plummet into the water below. I have to admit I was a little scared, but it was an amazing rush! Similar to my skydiving experience several years back but minus the parachute and old guy strapped to my back – haha. So I enjoyed the coolness of the water for a bit and then when Rafael finished his smoothie, I went back to the cliff to jump off again for him to take some pics. I had to have proof that I did it! So off I went again…When I returned to where Rafael was, he just kept shaking his head calling me “Crasy girl”. We joked about how it was higher than I originally thought, and he told me that I’m one of a couple people in our group that would actually do something like that. I think I’m gonna be the “crasy girl” of the audit group. So that was that – and then we had to head back to the boat.

We were on the boat for another hour before reaching Aegina, the third and largest of the islands we visited that day. Aegina is also known for its pistachios. Apparently it’s one of the largest producers/exporters of pistachios in the world. As we reached there during the hottest part of the day (around 4pm), we opted for a bus tour that took us to the Temple of Aphaea and a Monastary that’s not completely finished on the inside but really beautiful. You could see all the pistachio trees while we were driving (don’t worry mom – I got pictures for you!) and I even had some yummy pistachio ice cream later when we reached the Temple of Aphaea. The temple was really amazing!! When you just imagine how old these ruins are and that they were uncovered and still standing…it just takes your breath away. I also love to hear about the mythology behind these places! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Aphaea.

The view from the area was really great too – I coulda hung around there for hours. But of course we didn’t have that much time. We headed to the Monastary and checked out that building. It had really beautiful and intricate woodwork on the doors, chairs, art deco. That was about it for the second stop and then back to the boat. So I made the mistake of spending the entire day outside with no sunscreen and got MAD sunburned. I mean sunburned on my shoulders, chest, arms, and legs! I’ve never been that badly sunburned before. Oh well, live and learn – now I know better. But the cruise in general was really relaxing and beautiful and it definitely made me want to go back and check out the other islands. Apparently only 30% of the Greek Islands are inhabitable, so there weren’t many “sandy beaches” or areas even with trees on them from what we saw in the Saronic Gult. Rafael said that he definitely preferred the Caribbean. I’ll have to check that out next time.

Saturday night – We got back to the hotel around 8pm and prepped to go out for the night. This time we were determined on checking out the night scene so we went out to Psiri. We walked around checking out what restaurants were in the area and settled on this one really cute one. Wish I could remember the name, but it was written all in Greek. It was pretty crowded and most people there seemed to be our age so I figured that it would be a pretty good place. The food was YUMMM. After we filled up on dinner we walked around for a while to check out the scene. By this time it was close to midnight so we figured people would finally be going out. There were some cute bars and a lot of people just sitting outside patio-style in front of them. There was also some pretty decent music, so we went into a couple bars and settled on this one night club that had the best music (in my opinion). It was definitely great people watching, but there’s only so much fun you can have with you’re with 1 other co-worker of the opposite sex. Of course, people thought we were together so it was pretty difficult to meet any new people. Hopefully Japan will be better as there’s a bigger group and mostly girls. So we stayed out till around 3 or 4 and then headed back to the hotel since we’d had a pretty long, exhausting day.

Sunday – June 24
Today our flight left around 4pm so we had some time to sight-see around Athens. Our hotel was in the old center of town, so within walking distance from the Acroplis. So just our luck…the day we decided to go to the Acropolis, it was closed due to a strike. We still walked there and took some pictures from the outside. I wish we coulda gone up, but something to do for the next trip. Today was ESPECIALLY hot!!! On top of that, I was crazy sunburned and exhausted from the previous 2 days of not sleeping. I didn’t make it very long, but we still walked around for a couple hours and saw the Temple of Zeus on the way back. Rafael’s obsessed with Hard Rock Cafes, so if there’s one in the city that we’re in, we HAVE to go there. So we hit up the Hard Rock before making it back to the hotel where I proceeded to pass out for a couple hours before our flight. Rafael went up to the rooftop pool to enjoy the water and I’m sure there was some good eye candy for him there as well. Unfortunately our weekend of fun was over and back we went to Bucharest for our last week of work.

(The strike at the Acropolis)

The last week was actually pretty good. I’d gotten most of my work done and our Director came into town Monday night for a day. We took him out to this Lebanese place we really enjoyed and he loved it! He’s big on the Middle Eastern type food since he lived in Saudi Arabia for 12 years. Paul, our Director, is a pretty interesting/funny guy to talk to. Tuesday was a busy day of wrapping things up and having meetings, etc, but it flew by as did the rest of the week. And by Thursday, we were really ready to get back home. The Affiliate took us out to dinner Thursday night to an Italian place “Trattoria Il Calcio”. It was tooo good! So all in all, I had a really great experience in Romania – the people were awesome, but the only big downside was the amount of smoke I had to deal with. I wish I had taken some more time to wander around the city, but who knows if I’ll maybe go back for something else. I’d also become really good friends with Diana, our PwC person. Hopefully we’ll be able to meet up again at some point, she’s a lot of fun and we definitely plan on keeping in touch.

Monday – July 2, 2007
So now I’m back in Chicago – woohoo!! The plane ride was around 12 hrs with connections, etc but I got a few good hours of sleep in. Saturday I went to the Taste of Chicago with my friend who came up from Dallas, Arnand, and then after a 5-hour nap, I was ready to hit the town! Jet lag got the best of me and I spent most of Sunday sleeping, but now it’s the start of a new week and only 2 days of work J.

Next trip – Japan for 5 weeks…should be interesting!

So far this is what I have planned for those weekends:

On our way to Tokyo, stopping in Beijing to check out the Great Wall

First weekend in Tokyo - Mt. Fuji

Second weekend in Tokyo (long weekend) - possibly go to a music festival and check out the Oban festivities

Third weekend in Osaka - check out the area

Fourth weekend - go to Hong Kong to visit my friend Vishnu