You can tell how fancy or tourist accommodating a place is by whether or not they have western style toilets. And let me tell you, they had niiiiiice bathrooms. WITH ACTUAL TOILET PAPER THEY PROVIDE FOR YOU (you always have to carry around your own) AND SOAP AND PAPER TOWELS. Also, they had live flowers in the bathroom so that’s reeeeeally when you know it’s a snazzy place. You might be sick of me showing pictures of toilets but it's seriously such a huge deal for us.
Then we walked to this place called Hong Ya Dong that was about 15 minutes away because Brandon had looked online and found an Irish pub and a Mexican restaurant. YES PLEASE. The restaurant is in a really cool area, from the top floor at street level it looks like there was nothing below besides a river. But really there are like 7 floors of restaurants, shops, neat views, waterfalls, and statues spread throughout the different levels. It’s really hard to explain and the pictures don’t do it justice. This is at the top, we still aren’t sure why the pirate ship is there but obviously I’m not going to not get a picture with a pirate ship.
On the subway ride home we saw this little girl hop on all by herself, sit down, and act like it was no big deal. She couldn’t have been more than 8 years old! Where were her parents?!! I was freaking out, but I guess that’s just how it goes here. Ah, just so scary to me. It was a loooong ride home though. I mean it was really only an hour but everyone was exhausted. I think we all fell asleep at some point on the way home. Check out Dr. Cheng and the little girl. He was tired too.
This is a model of the grounds and Dr. Cheng translating what the tour guide is saying to the rest of us American folk.
There was an old government building that held what would be a court room today. They would have to kneel in front of the judge (or someone of the like) while guards stood around them. So of course Dr. Walker and I had to admit to our crimes and face the punishment.
I tried to convince the guard to go easy on me but he was a bit unresponsive (okay okay, bad joke).
There was a cool cave hideout too. If I was apart of this battle back in the 1200s, this is where you'd find me. Underground away from all the action. Those Mongols were ruthless.
We exited out of the main gate of the fortress and had to walk down a bazillion stairs to get to the bottom where we started. But the UC faculty (can I call myself that? I think I will, it’s technically accurate and I totally feel cool saying it), took a quick picture before making the trek down!
Hopefully I'll be able to update you all again sooner than it took last time!
Peace.