• Do your traveling during daylight hours. Arriving into town on a train at midnight isn’t the safest bet.
• Treat solo travel as you would your own city. I wouldn’t walk around parts of Portland at night, so why would I abroad?
• Don’t dress like a hooker. OK, maybe more useful to say dress appropriately for the region you’re in. Modesty goes a long way.
• Know where you’re hotel is on a map, before you even arrive at the airport. You’ll know if the the taxi is leading you astray.
• Keep a hotel/hostel business card with you at all times.
• Master the “Don’t Mess With Me” walk, at some point you’ll need it.
• When looking for hostels online (HostelWorld.com etc), sort by location. Location is a huge deal when traveling solo. Example: my hostel in Madrid was on a pedestrian street, and I could go out at night alone. In Barcelona, it was down by the port, so I made sure to not be solo after dark.
• Use your “sixth sense” to differentiate between danger and simple curiosity. Many cultures are just curious as to why you’re alone, or why you have blond hair, or why you have blond arm hairs. :)
• Do small group tours for countries you want to experience without the hassle (like Morocco and Turkey).

Ladies, what are your tips for solo travel?

It was so great walking into the Portland airport and seeing familiar faces. I’m so excited to be back! I love Portland and I love America.

I`ve had my first real Japan sushi lunch, yummm! And now it`s off for some exploring! I`ll try to post some pictures of China soon.

After a long morning of hurry up and wait, we finally made it through Customs to board the boat for our trip across the East China Sea. It took us about an hour just to get out of Shanghai, which made me thankful for not taking a river boat here in Shanghai, as we saw the whole thing from the ferry anyway. So, our accommodations are “clean and comfortable”, lol, no, really, it’s cool, it’s just a little cramped to have 4 people in a closet-sized room. Thankfully, the boat is fairly empty so there are a lot of lobby and lounge areas, and even a reading room that looks out over the front of the boat. I guess I’ll be doing a lot of reading over the next few days. The sad part of the boat? Back to regular prices, lunch was $5, I miss my 25 cent street food!

After lunch, everything was going fine, people seemed to be getting along, we tried some real Japanese saki at lunch, everyone was reading or playing games, no one had gone stir-crazy yet… and then? People started disappearing. The sea sickness was setting in. Even after their meds, almost everyone had gone to their rooms, and the halls and bathrooms had a distinct vommity smell. The water got choppier into the evening, with some pretty big swells, that the whole boat was rocking from side to side. By around 6pm I started to feel it a little bit, so I decided to just go to sleep in case I was getting sick like everyone else. That did the trick and the waves rocked me right to sleep. (I’ve heard it wasn’t such a calm night for my comrades). After about 12 hours of sleep, I was refreshed and ready to… sit around on the boat. At breakfast, I discovered that I was the only one enjoying our little adventure at sea, and was beginning to feel a little like Jonah.

OK, I admit, by mid-afternoon I was just about stir-crazy, but at least I wasn’t ill. I spent the day playing games, reading, and drinking the free tea from the vending machine downstairs. Oh, it’s nice to experience simple means of travel, but it will be nice to just get there tomorrow.

Are we there yet?!?

A few of my favorite things about Shanghai:

• Everyone kept recommending the acrobat show in Shanghai, and it was definitely a must-see. The finale was very Evil Knievel. I searched for the Shanghai acrobats on YouTube and here’s a cool video of the finale.
• Another memorable part of Shanghai was our trip out to one of the canal towns. We walked around the town and toured historic buildings, hitched a ride on one of the boats, ate lunch and more strange street food.
• The Bund, which is just the river walkway, was a great way to see the river area of the city, followed by a subway ride under the river to Pudong and visiting the Pearl TV Tower.
• Spending our very last bit of Chinese currency (on anything edible) before getting on the boat to Japan, since you can’t exchange currency out of the country.

Next stop, the East China Sea… for 2 days and 2 nights of card games and saki fun.

This afternoon, several of us girls decided to get massages. We walked to the Bell Tower area, to a nicer looking spa, since we’ve heard horror stories. When we walked in, 2 rows of Chinese girls sang “Ni hao” and “Hello.” After a little bit of difficult translation, we managed to let them know (we hoped) that we wanted massages. They guided us up some ominous looking stairs (isn’t this the part in the movies that it all starts to go downhill?). Thankfully we were all in the same room, but they all screeched “nooo, nooo nooo” when we asked if we should be in towels. So we had fully-clothed, full-body massages. AND they used the hole in the table for your feet instead of your head. AND they watched some kind of Chinese talk show while they worked. AND they giggled while watching TV and answering their cell phones. After a brutal 70 minutes we were through, but only after they tried to bend me in half, I might add. I expect my back to hurt tomorrow… a lot.

I’m not sure how so many people fit on one train, even with the bunks that are stacked three high! So I make the poor choice of the top bunk… no head room, but at least people can’t walk by and stare at me while I sleep. After exploring around the train and eating some noodles, I go to sleep even before lights out, but wake up at 4am again.

The train arrives in a city that I expected China to look like. It’s crowded, hazy, and a little run-down. Welcome to Xi’an. As we get off the train, we’re surrounded by locals, pressing in and asking for our train ticket stubs, offering hotels etc. It’s kind of claustrophobic feeling. The night’s sleep was actually pretty good and after a shower and breakfast, it feels like a new day.

First stop, the Muslim Quarter. Xi’an was the end of the Silk Road trade route in China that connected the East to Europe, which is why Xi’an has a small Muslim population. Time for food experiments! The street food is so cheap, that you can just try whatever and if you don’t like it give it away, since you’re spending all of about 20 cents on it. Rule #1 of street food: Make sure it’s hot, watch them cook it and then buy it. My favorite is a yam treat that tastes like honey. After a few hours of wandering, and with a belly full of new and strange foods, I head to the bank to change some Yuan into Yen for the boat to Japan. Chinese bureaucracy at its finest, an hour later, I have some Yen and about 20 copies of my passport signed and stamped.

Dinner is my first Sichuan food experience, apparently they just use more spices in that province. The verdict… not so great, a little hot for my taste. After dinner, we head back to the hotel, and like the rock stars we are, go to sleep at a respectable 9:30pm, while agreeing that we need to go out when we get to Shanghai.

First stop, The Great Wall. Pictures can’t prepare you for how massive the wall is! We stopped at one of the less crowded spots, and only saw a few people over several hours of hiking. It’s amazing that you can still take pictures of the wall and it looks like the wall never ends, it just loops up and over and around the next hill. As a side note, I wonder how they traveled the tops of the wall, given the average height of the Chinese and Mongols in those days, and the average height of the steps…. hmmm….

Accidentally getting trapped inside a hutong (shanty town within the city), on the way to the Temple of Heaven, and ultimately squeezing through a little fence to get back out on the main roads.

The local Chinese guide on the Tienanmen Square & Forbidden City tour openly answered our questions about the square, the student uprising, Mao etc, (but not until after we’d left the square because of secret police). Since the original events weren’t televised, he didn’t even learn about it until university!

A truly local lunch. Since our local guide had to eat lunch too, he offered to take us to his favorite restaurant. It ended up being my favorite meal in China! They typically do family-style dinners, which averages 1 dish per person and then you share it all. Fried bean curd, rice, cashew glazed chicken, sweet peas, broccoli and massive Chinese beers. It was also nice to have someone else order, instead of pointing at pictures.

Tea! I knew tea was a big part of Chinese culture, but it’s seriously everywhere. I did a free tea ceremony near The Forbidden City which ended up being really fun.

Colorful exercise equipment. Beijing is littered with exercise stands. Walking by the lake we found an elliptical-styled one and further in town we even found some snowboarding type ones.

The Silk Market, where you can get knock-off anything fo cheap cheap cheap. Don your Chinese accents please… “You like price?” “Lady, you want t-shirt” “Lady, you want jeans” “Prada, Louis Vuitton, ??DVD?” and my favorite… “Lady, I found the panda you’ve been looking for” How did she know? ;)

Squat toilets. No, not a highlight of my trip, but certainly memorable. Seeing Chinese girls teetering out of the toilets in 5 inch heels, I was baffled as to how they balanced on those “starting blocks”.

Next stop, Xi’an. (pronounced “She on”)

Thankfully, the “Aah! I’m actually doing this” thoughts kicked in mid-flight, so the panic was short-lived. The 12 hour flight into Beijing ended up being long, but bearable. I watched 3 1/2 movies and napped in my row of 2 chairs all to myself. In the rows to my right were 2 mothers and infants. They were surprisingly quiet. So basically, Chinese babies are perfect.

I arrived in Beijing around 4:30pm, Customs was efficient and after a quick trip to the ATM for some RMB I headed to the taxi stand. I waited in the taxi queue, with my Chinese symbols hotel name scrap of paper. My taxi driver spoke no English (very few people here do), but there was a phone number on the paper as well. He ended up calling the hotel about 5 times, so after 5 calls, 75 minutes and 120 RMB later we arrived… at the wrong hotel. OK, right hotel, but apparently the trip start location had changed to another hotel. Not very comforting after a long flight. They ended up driving me over to the other hotel. 2 of the people in line with me in Customs are on the same trip, go figure.

After listening to the last 5 minutes of the orientation meeting we went out in search of food and snacks for tomorrow’s Great Wall hike. We walked about a mile to a market and I got water (15 cents), cucumber potato chips, yogurt and banana chips. On the way back I stopped at a bakery to get pastries for breakfast tomorrow. I skipped the dinner part and went back to the hotel to sleep. My roommate had arrived. She’s the only other American on the trip, and is thrilled that I’m not an 85 year old widow. lol.

1st Day… Beijing is massive and busy and eerily smog-free