This was just too good to pass by

"To all experts of Westinghouse & Shaw Consortium,

Although I don’t believe in Christianism, I do believe in thanksgiving. Only you have a heart of thanksgiving, you can have various supports from the multitude.

Thanks AP 1000 for gathering us here in Haiyang Nuclear Power Plant site;

Thanks each experts for your selfless contribution and strong supports;

Thank you for the excellent contributions you have made and will make for Haiyang Nuclear Power Plant and China’s Nuclear Power cause!

Wish you a happy life!"

Parents II

Day two:

Breakfast before our trip to SuZhou... guess where?


That's right, Starbucks...


I especially like this picture because I managed to fit two Starbucks logos in it


My mom was watching these old ladies play with swords:


In SuZhou:

First stop, the silk museum


We learned about the old silk industry and watched these ladies work a huge loom.


One of the best parts of the day, inside a temple dating back to the 1500's

Parents

Proof that Barb and Len actually did come to China:



We're at the Yu Yuan Garden

Vietnam Pictures

These pictures are from Dalat, what I thought was the Lake George of Vietnam








Some crazy house:

Waterfall

I was very lucky to get to see this. This is one of the reasons why having a motorbike was great. I could go where I wanted when I wanted. This waterfall was a very nice side trip on my way to Dalat:



Check out the other pictures of it in the post below. It turns out that this park had as many people as a six flags. The picture above is the only one I could get that made it look "natural." If you look at the picture below, it's zoomed out a little and is amazing! It took me a minute to realize what the structure is that's next to the waterfall... it's (of course) an elevator!!

January 29, 2009

After waking up from my awful nights sleep I went for a hike with another backpacker... we went to the the "rapids." They say pictures are worth a thousand words so I won't even try to describe the rapids:

Stunning... I didn't care much for Cat Tien National park


But they did have some cool ants!




And some really cool trees


Like Mr. Uncle Dong


A picture of Uncle Dong

Vietnam Pictures

More pictures from Vietnam

Over a MILLION Vietnam Dong!! One US Dollar is 17,000 Vietnamese Dong


My "last picture" as I told the guy who rented me the bike... He thought about this for a minute and then asked what I meant. I told him that the odds were good I wouldn't live much longer... He gave me a new helmet



So I actually drove by this person, stopped got my camera, took some pictures (that didn't come out) as she biked by me, then drove after her to take these two shots:


I'm sure she was scared out of her mind at this crazy white guy on a motor-bike with a camera snapping away, swerving all over the road... but she's transporting a huge piece of ice on her bike! How cool is that!


So a few hours after this I had my first (and luckily my last) accident on the bike. I laid it down when I was in some dirt. I wasn't prepared for how powerful the little guy was, but luckily the most damage was to my pride. I got a pretty good gash on my right arm, which has just about healed up... So the first day of biking got me to Cat Tien, a national park in southern Vietnam. If anyone goes to Vietnam, I would highly recommend you NOT go here. It's just not all that cool, but for some odd reason they do have bears in cages. I couldn't get closer, but trust me, it was a bear:


I decided to check out the local "hospital" to get some anti-bacteria stuff for my arm... Nobody was there...


My bed that night. I did make reservations (who would have thought?) so they were nice enough to rent me a sweet hammock. Now, I'm not a professional, but I know a few knots from my climbing days. In fact I trusted my life to knots, but I could NOT get this thing to stay up! I'm ashamed to admit it, but I tried everything. The self tightening knots didn't work at all, I just kept sliding down the pole they told me to tie it to. I sucked up my pride and went to ask someone in the office. They looked at me like I was stupid and showed me the exact same knot I was using. I slept on the ground.