Beijing, China for the Lunar New Year

One of the reasons we decided to live and teach in Korea for one year was the opportunity to travel to various countries nearby. In December we took a 10 day trip to Thailand and spent New Year's Eve in Bangkok. During the Lunar New Year, February 6-10th we had another opportunity to travel to a new country. We spent 4 nights in Beijing, China! We were visiting China while there were crazy snowstorms going on in the Southeast, where there were power outages for days and trains were not running. Fortunately for us, there was no snow in Beijing! It was very dry, albeit equally cold.

Although we only had 4 nights in China, we had an amazing time and would definately go back during the Spring / Summer months! As you can imagine, there was construction going on everywhere in Beijing as the countdown for the 2008 Summer Olympics nears. Speaking of the Olympics, wow!! the amount they must be making off souvenirs.. more on this later.


Gate 47 at Incheon Airport, Korea.





There's our plane, fuled up and ready to go!



Another in flight meal! Rice, beef, shrip, a bun, cake and some OJ - decent, but nowhere near as good as the food on Thai Air!



TsingTao beer.. mmm free alcohol on the plane :)



The outskirts of Beijing





Our blog would not be complete without a picture with a creepy baby doll, this picture was taken in the washroom at the Beijing Airport - instructions on how to use the baby change table.



One of the control towers at the airport, promoting China Mobile and the 2008 Olympics.

We took a shuttle bus from the aiport to this train station which was located near our hotel. The cost was Y16 or $2.25 each ($1=7Yuan).

There were about 5 city blocks that were encompassed with the shiny architectural designs below. On the first level there were some upscale stores such as Tiffany's, Burberry, Omega, Louis Vuitton and offices for Audi just to name a few.

Stay tuned for the Great Wall of China, The Forbidden City and more! (We're still sorting through pics, this isn't as easy as it looks!)

New Year's Eve 2008 - Bangkok, Thailand

Our last night in Thailand happened to be December 31st, 2007 and we spent the evening at Central World in Bangkok. Have you ever seen the countdown around the world on TV where they show you live footage of NYE in Times Square - New York, London-UK, Seoul-Korea, Tokyo-Japan, Sydney-Australia etc? It's even better than on TV! There were hundreds of thousands of people there having a great time, listening to the bands and waiting for the clock to strike midnight 2008 (and surprisingly, we had more elbow room than we have had in Korea and especially more than at the Seoul fireworks, wow!).

In a previous post, we mentioned that we met our friend James on the flight to Thailand, who was also an English teacher in Korea. Well, we met up with him while in Bangkok and made our way to mingle with the crowd at Central World, and of course we stopped at a 7-11 on the way for beer (in 1 square block we saw FOUR 7-11 stores, all stocked with cheap beer! :).

The theme for the countdown was Hands 2008: Bidding farewell to the old year while greeting New Year is a festive practice significantly embraced by people around the world as it’s the last biggest event of the year that leads to a fresh beginning. Hands Bangkok Countdown 2008 is designed to be an international symbol of the celebrations for Thais and visitors. Bangkok is a center of tourism in Southeast Asia, full of lively attractions and facilities for tourists. Click here for the official website.


3hrs, 56min, 11seconds to go!



Central World!



The bridge was also decorated for the event.



There were bright lights on the buildings everywhere you looked.



Krista and Prada.



Center stage, the globe was an digital display that also showed the countdown and the Hands 2008 logo.







So many people!



Ahhh Chang... how we miss your great taste..... :( If only we could get better beer here...



More lights!





It was a very large and upbeat crowd.



This was the largest LCD TV by Panasonic - they were showing a close-up of center stage as well as NYE around the world.





7minutes, 47 seconds to go!





Happy New Year 2008!!





Here is a short clip of center stage and the crowd.



It's a bit late, but Happy New Year 2008!! We miss our friends and family back home - this is our way of keeping in touch with what we have been up to during our travels (and providing info to anyone who is interested in travelling or teaching), we do encourage emails from anyone at jonandkrista@gmail.com. We also hope you will add your email to our blog list (top right of this page) you will receive an email copy of our blog posts when new ones are available.

Take care!

Elephant Village - Hua Hin, Thailand

While in Hua Hin we checked out the Elephant Village that was about a 15-20 minute drive from our hotel. We paid 800 baht each which included a 40 minute elephant ride and a coconut and pineapple snack afterwards.



After we sat on top of the elephant (His name was Peter!) we had the driver take a picture of us.



This statue appears to be some sort of guard for the village, the statue is looking in all directions and there are smaller guard statues at the bottom.



A few more statues, only one side of their chest seems to be covered.





A baby elephant! I think he said this one was about 4 years old..





Jon was nervous that the elephant was going to run!



Krista was fine, and liked to pet Peter's ears!



Looking towards Cha-Am the neighboring town



The elephant took us through water that was about 4 feet deep.





This was our driver.





Hollowed out coconut filled water and a side of pineapple.







You could buy bananas to feed to the elephants, or you could watch them eat the left over coconut for free anyway!



This elephant did a few tricks such as twist a hoolahoop and play the harmonica.






Short clip of the elephant going through water and eating a coconut.



Short clip of the elephant with a harmonica and hoolahoop.