Bali for My Birthday

Sometimes (like every day) I wonder if this life in China is worth it. I hate being so far away from family,  being on different continents is hard. Living in a place that doesn't speak English is hard. Not having comfort food at arms reach is hard (food is very very important to me, if you haven't noticed already.) And sometimes, my job is hard.

But, overall my job isn't bad. I am not taking work home with me each night like a teacher in the US would. My kids and I have finally started to get in the groove (geesh, it only took 7 months). I don't (normally) work weekends. Besides a summer holiday, we got a month off in the winter. A MONTH OFF! Talk about perfect timing too. My parents had just left, but before I could get too sad, we had another family visitor. Josh's 16 year old brother Jonathan came to travel with us in Southeast Asia. And it was time for the most epic birthday of my life.

Our original plan was to go to Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India. But, because we're dummies, Josh and I didn't realize that we didn't have enough visa pages in our passports to get an Indian visa and we ran out of time to get new pages put in. Instead, we sought out countries that gave visas on arrival.

The new itinerary:
Indonesia (Islands of Bali and Java)
Thailand (Phuket)
Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur)
A week back in Crapland (We flew to southern China and took a train to Shanghai)

Let's begin, shall we?

Hangzhou, China

Our flight out of the country left from Hangzhou, a city about 2 hours south of Shanghai.. Since we haven't really seen much of China since moving here, we took an early train to spend the day in a new city. Hangzhou was pretty lame. There was a big lake and nothing else. I was just so anxious to get out of China, I thought we were just wasting time. We spent the day walking around, taking pictures, and hanging out in KFC. That pretty much sums up our trip to Hangzhou.

The Emerging Gold Bull

Wow, beautiful pink flowers in the middle of winter!

....wait a second!

When I saw the couple changing their baby's dirty diaper on the table in the restaurant, I knew I was done with Hangzhou. Seriously, that's disgusting!

Brittany's Brilliantly Bodacious Bali Birthday Bonanza

Is that overkill? Nah.

We arrived in Bali super early on the morning of my birthday (January 28). The landing strip in Bali is super duper scary. In fact, just recently there was a plane that overshot the landing and crashed into the water. Luckily, that was not us! The woman who checked me in even wished me a happy birthday (Thanks, lady!) And off we were through the immigration line. Josh and Jon went before me. Josh and I were both crossing our fingers that they would let us in even though we had no more empty pages left in our passports. Josh went through just fine. I approached the attendant's desk and handed over my passport. He flipped through the whole book several times. Then he left the desk to go into an office. I looked at Josh and Jon wide-eyed. Are they seriously not letting me through?! Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh! A few minutes later, he came back. "Are you traveling alone?" he asked. "No, I'm with my family," I pointed to the guys. He looked at me with disapproval and gave me a little lecture. "You need to get a new passport, you have no more empty pages." Then, he squeezed the half page visa on a page that already had a few stamps on it. Whew, that was close! Apparently Josh's attendant didn't even look at his passport and just stuck the visa on an endorsement page.

Josh haggled and got a decent price on a taxi, who took us to Kuta Beach. Our taxi driver was named Ketut. I'm sure you're thinking, Wow, what are the odds? That's the name of the medicine man that Elizabeth Gilbert met in "Eat, Pray Love."  The odds are are quite high actually. (Sidenote: my dear friend Bri also traveled to Bali and met THE Ketut. Read about her adventure: here)

Once we arrived at Kuta Beach (completely overrun with tourists), we took a ferry to a smaller island off of Bali called Nusa Lembongan. Of course, the men running the ferry were willing to find us accommodations at their pal's hotel. We were taken to a beautiful resort on Mushroom Bay. It was pretty much out of our price range ($30, true story) but we were exhausted from our overnight travel, that we decided to stay a night or two.

Our whole trip wasn't great. But that first day in Bali was completely magical to me. Just thinking of it now brings such joy to my heart. It was the perfect birthday. We were out of China.We were in a tropical paradise. And we had the entire hotel to ourselves. Perfect.

And.... things pretty much went downhill from here.

Family Reunions

As I posted before, I shared that my family came to visit us just a few days after Christmas.  The coolest thing was that both my parents and my brother found a time that worked for all of them. The coldest thing was that it was the coldest weather ever. It's a bit challenging trying to enjoy the sights when you cannot feel your legs. We made it work though, frequent coffee/warm-up pit stops at KFC got us through.

We had planned my family's visit around the New Year holiday. It was perfect. They came in before the weekend, which was two days longer for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Then, we had a 3 day work week, in which my family would take their own little trip to Beijing to see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Then, they would come back to Shanghai where we'd enjoy the weekend together and celebrate my brother's birthday before they left on Monday. That is not how things worked out.

The Chinese government thought that it made more sense to have everyone have a normal weekend, come in for one day on the 31st (Monday) and then give the working world three weekdays off (Tuesday through Thursday. Then we came in for Friday. And Saturday. And Sunday. And then the next regular work week.

I don't swear often...but China, wtf? Seriously. What is that? How does that make sense to ANYONE? Do you think any kid is going to enjoy going to school for EIGHT days in a row? Absolutely not. And let me tell you, they didn't.

But anyway, back to my family's trip. After the national holiday switch around, we ended up having one day off less- one day less with my family.  Thankfully, the administration let Josh and I take a half day so we could have a little more time together. And, Josh and I ended up going to Beijing with them too.

The first few days, we took them to all our hotspots in our neighborhood: the local market, our favorite restaurants, and Wal-Mart of course. It rained. Cold, slushy, thinks it is snow, rain.

Shanghai

I'm SO HAPPY!!

Buses stop for no one.

Christmas came late!

Classic Tourist Picture

It rained and rained.

Walmart is different here

Candy aisle at Walmart

Beijing

I don't think I've ever been as cold as I was when we went to Beijing. The wind felt like ice. I wore: 3 pairs of socks, leggings, jeans, two t-shirts, a turtleneck, two sweaters, two scarves, ear muffs, a hat, a face mask, and my coat. Result: Still freezing.

The first day Mom, Dad, and Aaron went to the Forbidden City without us. I kid you not, the weather was sucking the life out of me. I slept all morning. Then, in the afternoon we all enjoyed a nice bowl of donkey soup. 

Welcoming 2013 on an overnight train!

The next day, we all headed to the Great Wall. It wasn't my first rodeo, but a completely different experience nonetheless. (Check out our last trip to Beijing here) This time, was a diy trip. Josh was our personal tour guide, he figured out the train we needed to take, and we were on our way. We met a nice fellow, Mattheus from Denmark who was traveling all over Asia alone. He and Aaron really hit it off. We went to the part of the wall near Badaling. It is one of the most famous tourist spots because you can see the wall wrap around like a snake. Because this is such a tourist hot spot, it's super accessible. Talk about a happy surprise! I was imagining an hour long hike up a mountain, before even getting the the wall on which you still have to climb cobble stone steps. Instead, it was a quick walk up a modern staircase to the ticket booth, and once we were in, we were on the wall! So, we made it to the first part that you can see in the picture below, and called it a day. I made the mistake of removing my glove to take a picture on my ipod, and I could not feel my finger for about 10 minutes after.

Aaron and Mattheus

Aaron just has to show off.

Dang, windburned cheeks

 After gaining our strength back at KFC (mashed potatoes and milk tea for me!), we headed back to the heart of Beijing to see Mao's grand portrait at Tiananmen Square. But it was so cold, and much like  going to the wall, this was a hit and run expedition. "We're close enough, take a picture!"

Brit and Aaron sing "My Little Buttercup"

Aaron and Dad in a Tibetan store

We had a great little trip. It was nice to see Beijing again, but I DO NOT recommend going in the winter. Seriously, don't do it. 

Getting back to Shanghai was a wee dramatic. We took the subway back to the train station with our already purchased tickets in hand. But for some reason, we were cutting it close (the Mager way) that we literally ran down to the platform and on to our train ONE minute before it left. It was really funny because some of the attendants seemed like they were cheering for us- You can do it! Others just seemed annoyed. But, we made it, and Josh and I were back in time for work the following day.

Back to Shanghai

Though we had to work for the last few days my family was in town, we still managed to have a great time. While I was away, Dad got acquainted with the local market and little vendors. Then he proceeded to weatherproof our apartment. He stuffed pillow stuffing in the windows then covering them with plastic, weather stripping on doors, the works. One thing that really stinks here is that most of these old apartment buildings are just solid concrete. So they just soak up the cold (and the heat in the summer!) My family did come to the school one day and meet my 3rd graders. I think everyone had a lot of fun.

Dancing in the bank?

Yuyuan Garden

Flirting with two Korean girls on the bus

We had to show them the Bund at night!

It was vacation of epic proportions. I apologize that this post is ....4 months late. Now, be prepared for a flood of new posts about our Chinese New Year holiday with Josh's brother Jon, among other things.