Thanks anyway, China -- We LOVE Laos.

Hello again! We've escaped China, where our blog was blocked (I guess we're too dangerous to "the man"), and so we can FINALLY update you on what we've been up to!

So, back to July 4th: We celebrated our nation's independance day in style... Japanese, korean, turkish, australian, chinese, scottish, and really bad americana style, that is. Our last CS hosts in Japan, Bryan and Trisha, invited us to attend a 4th of July international celebration on their rooftop in Shimonoseki -- and what a party! Fire juggling, an all-American music mix with songs about every state, inflatable watermelons, and food -- so much food -- chicken, giant grilled snails, kimchi, REAL ice cream, oreos, and alcohol were consumed until around 11pm... and THEN we went to Karaoke! In Japan, its different than the US-- they put you in a big room with all your friends, and you can choose from a huge book of songs and sing to your heart's content. Favorite performances were "Trapped in the Closet", by Emily, and a rousing rendition of "I don't know the words to this song", by Jess. It was probably the best send-off we could have asked for from Japan!

The following day, we embarked on a 2 day ferry ride from shimonoseki to Suozhou, China -- the ferry was huge and nearly empty. The bath room on this thing was incredible -- literally a huge bath tub filled to the brim with the hottest water imaginable, surrounded on all sides by little shower heads -- needless to say, we bathed a lot! It was pretty mellow, since everyone else onboard was Chinese and therefore didn't speak to us.

Arriving in Suozhou was a bit of an adventure, as we had no Chinese money and the port was outside of the main town. We managed to get into town, get money, and jump on a bus to Shanghai -- the scariest bus ride of our lives. People in China drive like C-R-A-Z-Y, swerving in and out of whatever lane, honking at everything else that is moving, yelling at eachother, spitting... we felt lucky to make it alive to the bus station in Shanghai, really only a short distance away but taking forever to reach. There were so many people in Shanghai -- we arrived in the middle of the city, with no idea of where anything was -- hordes of people pushing through crowds of more people, hot, sweaty, noisy. For our first meal in shanghai, we ate at a Japanese noodle house -- comfort food already. Afterwards, we wandered around a bit and, to Emily's extreme enjoyment, found some great grafitti, which had been lacking in Japan. We then made our way to our host Christina's house, where we would spend the next 4 nights, sleeping on hte floor and waking up to french lessons every morning at 6am. However, Christina was really helpful, helping us navigate the huge city and surrounding area to find some cool places to visit.

While heading toward the comfort of the Shanghai museum (which was amazing), we were confronted by 4 very friendly English speaking chinese people, who seemed to want to be our new best friends! After chatting with us for a few minutes, they invited us to a tea house and to see chinese acrobats (a theme that would be repeated later). Somewhat reluctantly, we followed, only to end up in a tiny tea room where tea cost $7 a taste. We expressed our lack of funding, and made our escape to the museum. Following the museum, another girl tried a similar thing -- smarter this time, we bid her farewell quickly. Later that day, after wandering throughh Old Shanghai and meeting a very cute street kitten, we dined on about a million crawfish (mild exaggeration)! They were delicious, reminding us of 6th grade science class where we learned all the parts of our very own crawfish (which Jess later freed in Carpenter field stream, and Emily freed in a creek by the hospital).

More importantly than all this -- Emily got her hair cut!! She had desperately needed one , since it was so humi everywhere. Wishing to have her mohawk back, she settled for a faux hawk (a small mohawk) much to her delight. The best $3 we had spent yet!

The other full day we spent in the Shanghai area, we took a bus to Hangzhou, one of the most beautiful and largest lakes in China. It was HOT that day, and we were glad to spend it wandering aimlessly around a lake rather than through the streets of a city.

On to Nanjing, where we met up with a Bucknellian who had heard of our trip and invited us to stay. The first night was spent at a very interesting party at her friend's house... and what party is complete without beer pong, a strictly american game played by all these chinese people who were all going to American universities. We then headed to the bar, where one member of the party fell deathly ill, and was literally carried to a nearby hotel room to "sleep it off". We all stayed up late playing card games and talking, before returning home and sleeping until noon. The next day we shopped, wandered around, and ate -- our host really liked to feed us. Her mom cooked twice, including welcome dumplings (dumplings served to arriving guests), and we ate the following things in town: duck blood soup (delicious), egg tarts, sticky rice things, octopus on a stick, weird gelatonous sweet soup, icey fruity treats, and probably a few other things that we forget about. The following day, our last in Nanjing, we visited the old city walls, which were interesting enough. That evening, we got on a 15 hr long train ride bound for beijing-- our first ride in hard seats.

In case you are not aware, hard seats are exactly what they sound like. Made of hard plastic covered in some form of cloth, they come in rows of 2 or 3, don't move, are very hard, and are extremely uncomfortable to sleep on. By the time we got to Beijing, our asses were sore, we were exhausted, and we were ready for an easy night in. Luckily, our host in Beijing (chris, a fellow NH-ite), had left us a spare key under a mop and we were able to get into his house and relax with his kitten for the evening.

Beijing was our favorite Chinese city. On the first night, chris took us on a walk around his neighborhood, which included Drum and Bell Towers and a lake surrounded by restaurants, bars, and clubs, all brightly lit and full of white people. The next day, we went to Tianamen Sq, the forbidden city, and another park. Tianamin Sq is so full of history of the people's revolution -- we saw Mao's portrait, a monument to the revolution, and met Charles. Charles was eager to speak to foreigners to practice his english (telling us he was goign to harvard, yale, or perhaps oxford), and followed us around, asking for our emails (which we declined0 and really wanting to be our new best friend. We craftily passed him off to other foreigners, after posing for the required photographs (which started a photo frenzy, in which two other groups of Chinese people wanted their pictures taken with us -- I think it was Emily's mohawk that got them) -- and went to the Forbidden City, A beatufiul sprawling maze of halls and courtyards, buildings and gardens, all very intricately designed and well renovated. A highlight of this visit was the Hall of Clocks, a collection of some of the most ridiculous timepieces ever made-- gilded peacocks, hot air balloons, elephant drawn chariots, all adorned marvelous clock faces. After leaving the forbidden city, we went across the street to a lovely park with numerous leveled pavilions, the highest of which had a beautiful view over the forbidden city -- perfect photo op!

The next day was Azerbaijan visa day -- basically, we ran around frantically from embassy to bank to embassy, narrowly meeting the deadline to submit our passports for azerbaijan visa consideration. We bought some train tickets to Xi'an, and didn't do much else.

The next day was the day of the Great Wall Adventure. Sooo, we got up early to go to the long distance bus station, where we were tricked by this woman posing as a bus conductor. She told us the stop to get off at to reach the section of the wall we wanted to hike (jinshaling to simitai), but when we got off the bus we were forced to take an expensive taxi rather than the minibus we had planned to the wall. Upon reaching the Great Wall, we realized we did not have enough money to hike it, get off, and get back to Beijing. After pleading with our taxi driver in broken Chinese and hand gestures, we were nearly forced to return to Beijing. In a last ditch effort, Jess asked these other two foreigners if they would lend us a couple hundred kuai (amounting to about $30USD), which they DID, to our great appreciation, since the last thing we wanted to do was turn around.

Hiking 10km along the Wall was magnificent, marvelous, stupendous, incredible, amazing, surreal, picturesque (really, we took a combined 150 pictures) etc etc. Parts were in good repair, parts were crumbling under our feet, and Jess managed to fall once -- luckily with no major injuries, just a sore knee and slightly bruised ankle. The only drawback to this awesome experience were all the people trying to sell us water, teeshirts, postcards, coke, beer, and anything else we could have desired. Just to make a sale, many followed us and tried to make "friends" . Continuing our eating of weird foods, part of our lunch on the Wall consisted of chicken-ham sausage sandwiches on strange bread with strange ketchup (the other part was delicious -- Em had cooked up a lovely rice dish). Finishing the hike, we tried to meet our taxi driver (who was supposed to pick us up -- luckily we had not paid in advance). Not finding him, we negotiated a lower rate with another driver, and started our ride back to Beijing. About 5 minutes into our ride, who apears but our old taxi driver! apparently, the two were friends, and we completed the ride back to town with our original driver (at the lower rate, mind you). We'll post pictures when we can, but this was the highlight of our trip to China.

Our final day in this city we succeeded at seeing Mao- the real dead guy -- in his giant Masoleum in Tianamin Sq. It was a little creepy -- he was all glowing in his formaldehyde preserved state -- but cool none the less. We did NOT succeed in getting our Azerbaijan visas -- well, we got them, but they were for the wrong dates, and the guy wouldn't change them. currently, we're out about $600 and have bad visas, and are hoping we can either fix them or fly over azerbaijan. More details to come... We also went shopping at this 4 story clothing outlet store, where jess finally got to do some of her much wanted bargaining. we ended up paying about $12 for a small backpack and two bras -- beat that, walmart!

Our second 15 hour train ride (hard seats again) began that evening, as we headed to Xi'an, sitting next to a family of 11 people who had, at most, 8 seats. Upon our arrival (again tired and sore), we met up with Charming, our host in Xi'an, his 14 year old son Allen, and his mother, who hated us. The only exciting thing we did in Xi'an was visit the Terracotta Warriors, which were awe-inspiring. IT must have been such a huge undertaking to make them all, after which they were all destroyed, and then entirely rebuilt by modern day archaeologists. We spent a few hours here, before returning to the train station in Xi'an to await our next train ride to Kunming. This time, we sprung for hard sleepers (much more spacious and comfortable), since it turned out to be a 40 hour train ride through some of the most stunning countryside we've ever seen.

Kunming, although still with a popl of 5mil, was a much calmer city, and our CS hosts were great! Juliet, another NH-ite, and her b/f Stewart, were friendly and talkative, since they had both traveled to Laos and vietnam and were supportive of our decision to skip Vietnam and spend more time in Laos. We only stayed for one evening, but what an evening it was -- more great dinner, followed by nutella(!!!) and crackers. We slept with full, happy stomaches, and departed the next day for Mengla, a Chinese border town.

And now, finally, we reach today. We left Mengla this morning, cleared customs at Bohen in Laos, and traveled to our current destination, Louang Nam Tha, in N Laos. We love Laos already -- its very relaxed, calm, and we are SO glad to be away from the cities. We checked into our guest house, complete with hot water, towels, a fan, and TV (luxury), and ate a huge lunch of delicious foods for under $5. This weekend, we're hoping to go on a 2 day ecotourism trek through the local forest reserve, which will include a homestay with a native tribal family -- as long as we can convince other foreigners to go with us, reducing the price. We may bike around a bit this afternoon, but are really glad to be here.

Shoutouts: Happy 24th Birthday to my darling sister, Sara!! Heart you, dude! Japhsters, have a majakulous summer break!! Jill, good luck on your triathalon!!

That update should keep you all busy for a while. As for us, we're off to find some water and chill out for a bit. This is world traveler Scott and World traveler Kirschner, signing off!