Adventure - Traveling Thru History

Road Trip to Canada, Days 3 & 4

Erin — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 20:43:38 +0000

My best friend and I took a road trip to Canada to celebrate her birthday and my graduation. It was so much fun getting to explore Vancouver together. This is what we did on the last two days of our trip. #TBIN

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Road Trip to Canada, Day 2

Erin — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 17:00:32 +0000

My best friend and I spent four days in Canada together to celebrate her birthday and my graduation. This is what we did on second first day. #TBIN

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Road Trip to Canada, Day 1

Erin — Mon, 08 Jul 2019 20:21:06 +0000

My best friend and I spent four days in Canada together to celebrate her birthday and my graduation. This is what we did on our first day. #TBIN

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Biking Around the Xián City Wall

Erin — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 06:50:31 +0000

I really love traveling internationally. There is so much to see, do and learn. It’s so fun being in other cultures and seeing how other people live. The most amazing part of international travel is that there are TONS of things you can do in other countries that you really can’t do in the US. Like climb around 12th century ruins, explore castles and actually SEE ancient mixed with modern. It’s really great. When we were in China, we got to have a pretty fun experience. I was a little iffy about it at first. I mean, I wanted to do it, but my thought was, “Okay, we’re going to go bike around a wall. It’ll be fun and unique and we’ll get to have a cool little story about how we road bikes in China on an old city wall, but really, what’s so great about biking around a wall?” What I didn’t realize, though, was how MASSIVE that old city wall is and how surreal of an experience it would be. The city of Xián is over 3,000 years old. The original city wall was started in 194BC and completed in 190BC. It was either rebuilt or modified for further fortification during the Tang dynasty, which lasted from 618AD-907AD. During that time the wall measured 13.74 kilometres (8.54 mi) in length, 12–16 metres (39–52 ft) in thickness at the base and encompassed a city that covered 14 square miles (36 square kilometres) Later, the wall was rebuilt on this second foundation during the Ming dynasty of 1368-1644. The size of the wall during each rebuilding measured 59ft wide at the bottom, 49ft wide at the top, 39 feet tall and 8.5mi long. No wonder it took 4 years to build! When we arrived at the Xián City Wall, what impressed me most was the size of the wall. That thing is HUGE! I thought it was going to be quite a bit smaller than it really is. Walking inside the wall is pretty neat, too. When you walk inside, you really get to see the magnitude of the wall and feel how secure the ancient inhabitants felt when they lived inside it. To help you feel even more old-timey and like you’ve stepped into the past, they have pretty cool little guards to greet you as you walk through the gate. Don’t mind the cafe sign. I’m sure they had signs like that in the past. haha. This is a map of the entire wall. It doesn’t seem quite so big looking at the map, but seriously. This place is huge. It took us the full two hours to go around it with hardly any stops. The last quarter of the ride we were biking as fast as we could so we wouldn’t have to pay a fine for returning the bikes late. It’s hard to describe what it was like riding a bike around the city wall. It was fun and just felt so surreal. Here we are on modern bikes riding around on top of an ancient fortification, going past buildings that go back further than I can count! It really was amazing. After you climb up the stairs to the top of the wall and rent your bike (at either the north or south gates), you are free to ride around the entirety of the top of the wall. Of course, there is a 2-hour time limit, but they will gladly extend your rental for a small fee…………..every 5 minutes you are late. lol. If you don’t think you can do the whole wall in two hours you can just drop your bike at one of the other bike stations around the wall and you’re good to go. After they return your deposit, of course. But I recommend trying to get the entire circuit. We arrived about 2 minutes past our time, but the guy was really nice and wrote down that we returned it on time. So, but nice to the bike wrangler. There’s also an option to ride a tram. We didn’t see any trams while we were there, but that would probably be a good option for people who have trouble walking long distances or who have little kids. Having someone else drive you around seems like it would be a bit more relaxing, but would probably take away from the adventure. And, really, it was an adventure. We were pretty much in awe our entire ride and the first building we came to, we just HAD to take a picture in front of. But it couldn’t be just any picture. It had to be an action shot! And then we did our still shot. And, yes, that stuff Troy is wearing is all his camera gear. You’d think he’d be losing weight, lugging all that around…………..but, no. He likes to eat too much. lol I think on of my favorite things about the experience was being able to see the old mixed in with the new. It was pretty neat to see this ancient Chinese architecture surrounded by all of these modern buildings. I felt like I was stopping to take pictures every 10 feet. There are just so many amazing views and neat things to see from the wall. I read some reviews about the ‘attraction’ of visiting the Xián City Wall and it amazed me how people said there was nothing to see and that it was just ‘okay’. Seriously? It was amazing! It was such a neat experience and there were a lot of interesting things to see. There is just something surreal about hanging out on the top of a structure that’s over 3,000 years old while being surrounded by skyscrapers and hearing cars honking just below the wall. It’s like stepping back into the past while still holding onto the present. The buildings on the wall were pretty cool, too. They all had signs next to them, describing what they were for, which I really liked. They were mostly barracks and storehouses for the troops that were once stationed on the wall or places for them to warm up or dry off when weather was bad. Some were office buildings, which I thought was interesting. I would have thought those would be inside the wall, but perhaps they were offices for military officials who had complete confidence in the structure’s ability to withstand enemy attacks. Some other interesting things we saw on our ride were: This cool building. I’ve googled and googled to figure out what this is, but I have no idea. Maybe one of my Chinese-speaking friends can tell me? There was this cute little street market by the East side of the gate. It was fun watching people wander around down there. They are working on restoring the Guangren Lama Monastery by the northwest corner of the wall. Was kinda bummed that we were there before it was completed. I bet it will look great once the restoration work is done. Another building that I’m not sure what it is, but I like how it looks. Slanted ramp to bring supplies up to the top of the wall, yet keep it from getting too slick from rain. Kinda cool. This is where ancient artillery was stationed for the defense of the city. There are several of these spots around the wall. It still amazes me how well this was constructed. And I just love neat it all looks. Fun snake sculpture on the wall to commemorate the Year of the Snake. Once we got to the snake (about 3/4 of the way around the wall), we realized that we only had less than 10 minutes left on our rental! I can’t remember how much the late penalty was, but we certainly didn’t want to pay it. We were closer to one of the other bike stations, but we really wanted to be able to say we biked the entire wall, so we decided to race the last bit. It was a rough 2 miles, but it was a lot of fun darting around people and trying to ride as fast as we could. Everyone must have thought we were pedaling like crazy people, but we had such a great time bumping along the bricks. And we were so glad most of our remaining ride was downhill and that the wall wasn’t too terribly crowded. Unfortunately, we didn’t make our time, but the bike checker was nice and put that we were in on time since it was only maybe 2-3 minutes past. After we turned in our bikes and started heading towards the gate we’d come in, we found the reason why the last part of our ride hadn’t had many people. Down at the bottom of the stairs in the courtyard, there was a demonstration getting ready to start! Once we had secured a decent place to watch the performance from, I popped out my little camera and recorded it. The video is a bit jumpy because it was super windy and crowded. I kept getting pushed by people………….and at one point a kid started peeing right next to me and I had to jump to avoid getting peed on. Good times. :/ Gotta love China. Always something interesting. lol Price: To get inside the wall, it is 54 yuan for adults and 27 yuan for children under 4ft. For entrance and the Forest of Stone Steles Museum, 100 yuan. To rent a bike for 2 hours, it is 45 yuan for a standard bike and 90 yuan for a tandem bike. Both have a 200 yuan refundable deposit. Sightseeing tram is 80 yuan for the regular and 120 yuan for luxury. We didn’t see them while we were out, so I’m not sure what the difference is. Hours: Warrior Parade Performance : 11:00, 14:00, 17:00 (peak season only) Relieving Guard Ceremony: 10:00, 15:00 Thanks for reading my blog! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comments section below. I’d love to hear what you think!

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Top 5 Temples in Bangkok

Erin — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 15:00:17 +0000

Bangkok: A city filled with wonder and an idea that brings to mind an ancient world of foreign fantasy. The very name inspires thoughts of curly-toed shoes, golden headdresses and elaborately-designed tunic dresses or exotic, towering temples covered in gold. Just about everyone dreams of visiting Bangkok and experiencing that ancient world for themselves. It’s no wonder that this fascinating city has such a hypnotic pull on citizens from all over the world. Bangkok was first recorded as existing in the early 15th century, though it is speculated to be much older than that. The problem with having that much history and that much time to create enchanting structures to honor the past and the present is that there is just too much to do in one trip. Too many temples, too many museums and too many shrines. How is one to know which are worth visiting and which can be put off until a future visit? To help you with this question I have compiled a list of temples that will give the discerning traveler a wide variety of cultural experiences while visiting Bangkok. We were in Bangkok for five days and visited 14 temples along with many other sites in that time. We were up before dawn, back at the hotel after dark and going non-stop every single day. We wanted to see as much as we possibly could! Since this mode of travel is not for everyone, I decided to share with you my top temple picks for having an enjoyable, leisurely trip to the most visited city in the world. Wat Arun, The Temple of the Dawn If there is no other temple you visit while in Bangkok, visit Wat Arun. Wat Arun has been around since around 1768. Before the temple that is currently there, there were two other temples, Wat Makok and Wat Chaeng, which is what some of the locals still call this magnificent structure. It was an early morning walk by the ruins of the previous Wat Chaeng that inspired King Taksin to design Wat Arun in 1768. In the mid-1800s, Kings Rama II and Rama III made modifications to the temple to make it as it appears today. HOURS – 8:30 to 5:30. PRICE – 50 Baht LOCATION – There are several ways to get to Wat Arun. The easiest would be to take a taxi, but if you want to get there a more unique way, you can take a river boat from Sapphan Taksin boat pier to pier 8. From here you can hop a small shuttle boat to get to the other side of the river. Or, you can do a Chao Phraya River Tour and either have that boat dock at the Wat Arun pier or just get off there. There is a 20 baht fee to alight at the Wat Arun pier. Wat Traimit, The Temple of the Golden Buddha Wat Traimit is pretty cool. This temple was built in 2010 specifically to house the world’s largest solid gold statue which is estimated to have been made around the 13th-14th centuries. This temple doesn’t have the same ‘awe factor’ as some of the older temples do since it is so much newer, but it’s hard to press that point when inside lies something of a marvel in and of itself. The golden statue enshrined in Wat Traimit stands 9.8 ft tall and is valued at about $250 million. Good luck trying to steal it, though. The statue weighs 5.5 tons. HOURS – 8:30 to 5:00. PRICE – 40 Baht for the temple and 100 baht for an exhibition about the history of the Golden Buddha on the second floor. We opted not to do that, so I cannot say whether or not the exhibit is worth the price. Several reviews on TripAdvisor say it is interesting and informative, so it could be, depending on how much you like learning about history. 😉 LOCATION – The easiest way to get to Wat Traimit is by taxi or tuk-tuk. Wat Ratchanatdaram Worawihan and Loha Prasat Monastery, The Temple of the Royal Niece and The Metal Castle This temple was a bit of a fluke visit. We passed it on the way back from Wat Saket and were fascinated by the 118 foot tall structure, which turned out to be a monastery. The temple portion of this complex was begun in 1846, but it wasn’t completed until during the early 20th century and received it’s name because it was built by King Rama III for his niece, Princess Mom Chao Ying Sommanus Wattanavadi, the future wife and queen consort of King Rama IV. The monastery was begun shortly thereafter and was originally intended to be a small temple, but it blossomed into the magnificent meditation chamber and residence for the monks that it is today. Atop the monastery there are 37 spires which represent the 37 virtues toward enlightenment. As the brochure for Loha Prasat states, there were only three monasteries ever built with metal roofs and this one is the last remaining. What is really fascinating about the monastery (aside from the architecture) is the maze of corridors inside. They really are fun to wander around and down each hallway is something new and interesting, whether it be beautiful shrines, a variety of statues, text carved into the walls or plaques telling interesting facts. We had a lot of fun wandering around this ‘castle’ and visiting the temple on the grounds. In 2005 Loha Prasat was submitted to UNESCO for consideration of becoming a future UNESCO Heritage Site. HOURS – 8:30 to 5:00. PRICE – The temple grounds are free, but there is a 20 baht ‘donation’ box by the entrance. There was nobody watching it when we were there, but I’d recommend donating since the entire complex is well worth the donation. LOCATION – Wat Ratchanatdaram Worawihan can be found at the intersection between Ratchadamnoen Klang and Maha Chai Road. There is no public transit stop nearby, so the best way to get here is by using a taxi or a tuk-tuk. Wat Saket, The Golden Mount Wat Saket is possibly the oldest temple complex in all of Bangkok. This temple dates back to the Ayutthaya period, which lasted from 1350-1767. The temple has been renovated several time with the most recent being in the early 1900s. We really enjoyed visiting this temple. The walk up the hill (213 steps) provides some beautiful views of Bangkok along with various little gems along the way. There are several nooks and crannies in the wall supporting the structure filled with a variety of mini shrines, statues, carvings and flora. If you pay attention, you will find a few short pathways that lead off the main path and provide some pretty scenery and nice views. One of the really nice things about this temple is the feeling of peace and serenity that pervades the grounds. You will also love the panoramic views of the city. HOURS – 8:30 to 5:00. PRICE – The temple grounds are free, but there is a donation box at the top of the hill. Nobody monitors if you put in a donation or not, but it would be polite to put some baht in there as a thank you for letting visitors in. LOCATION – The easiest way to get to Wat Saket is by taxi or tuk-tuk, though you can also take a water taxi, which will drop you a short 5-minute walk from the temple. Wat Phra Kaew, The Temple of the Emerald Buddha The final temple on my list is found inside the Grand Palace complex. The Grand Palace was built in 1782 with Wat Phra Kaew being finished in 1785. The Emerald Buddha was brought to the Grand Palace when it was completed in 1782 and then moved to the temple when it was finished. There are various legends surrounding the Emerald Buddha with no concrete date as to when it was actually made, though some of the legends place it as being made in India 500 years after Lord Buddha reached nirvana, though nobody knows exactly when that was. Another legend shows it as existing in the lands that are now Cambodia during 457AD. During the proceeding centuries, it changed hands several times before landing in present-day Laos for several hundred years before Rama I became king of what is now Thailand and brought the statue to Wat Phra Kaew. There are several disputations to these legends, some say it was made in Sri Lanka while other say it was made in Thailand in the 14th century. Will we ever know for sure where it came from? Probably not. It’s still fun to think about, though. Another tidbit about the statue: it is not actually made of emerald. It’s true stone is jade. Why is it called emerald? Well, because the word emerald in Thai means deep green color. The actual complex of Wat Phra Kaew is quite grand. There are over 100 buildings and each is very ornate and beautiful. We spent several hours wandering around and taking it all in. I think one of my favorite parts of the temple was the scaled model of Angkor Wat. Very neat. There are other fascinating sights at Wat Phra Kaew and I recommend setting aside at least two hours to visit this temple. We were there for two and a half hours and didn’t get to see it all, but that’s because we were trying to photograph just about everything and didn’t realize it was as big as it was. Eventually, it closed and we had to leave. So, if you just like to go and wander without taking many pictures, about two hours should be fine. If you like to take lots of pictures, maybe give yourself three or more hours. HOURS – 8:30 to 3:30 – We arrived around 1pm and it was VERY crowded. I’d recommend arriving in the morning as soon as it opens. PRICE – The cost for this temple and the palace grounds is 400 baht. This price also include a ticket to The Pavilion of Regalia and a ticket for the Vimanmek Mansion Museum, which is offsite and can be used within 7 days. LOCATION – You can take the BTS skytrain to the Saphan Taksin station or you can take the Chao Phraya Express Boat (no flag, an orange flag, or a green flag) to Pier 9 (Tha Chang). If you don’t want to worry about the hassle of figuring out which boat or dealing with train changes, you can always ride a tuk-tuk or take a taxi. TIPS FOR VISITING THE GRAND PALACE They are very strict about respectful attire and will refuse to let you in if you are wearing shorts, a short skirt, a sleeveless and/or see-through shirt. If you are wearing anything like that, you will be required to either change or rent appropriate coverings. We didn’t like the price of the sarongs inside the grounds, so we went outside to where there were shops and people on the street renting clothes. I would not recommend doing this. If you want to buy something from a shop, go for it, but be wary of people on the side of the street renting clothing. We rented some pants for Troy and received a numbered ticket to receive our 100 baht deposit back, but when we came out after the temple closed, she was long gone. So, you should either dress appropriately or bring something to cover up with. They also require you to be wearing socks when walking around the complex, no bare feet allowed. Conclusion and GPS My City Giveaway Bangkok truly does have many fascinating and enchanting temples and a trove of cultural history. I wish everyone could see all of the beautiful temples Bangkok has to offer. On a short trip, though, these are my recommendation for must-see spots. The temples I have listed are the ones I feel will provide a person with the greatest opportunity to experience a variety of architectural styles as well as the possibility of learning the most about the Thai people, their history and their love of their Buddhist culture. Another way you can make sure you’re maximizing your experience is by...

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