Ni hao Portsmouth!

Hey guys! I just got back from China! While I was there, I went to Hong Kong and Beijing. Those cities are VERY different. I’m going to tell you a little bit about both:

Remember what I told you about Hong Kong? Hong Kong is actually NOT in China. It is part of the People’s Republic of China (China’s long, fancy name), but Hong Kong people don’t have to follow Chinese rules. My favorite part of Hong Kong was the big light show that covers the entire city! At 8pm every night, all the skyscrapers and big Hong Kong buildings light up in a show with lasers, spotlights and rainbow craziness set to music. It was really cool to see. My friends and I took the Victoria Peak tram to the top of the mountain to watch the sun set. We saw all the buildings turn their lights on and come to life!

While I was in Hong Kong, I got dim sum. Dim Sum is sort of like brunch, but instead of pancakes and bacon, you eat lots of little foods that add up to one tasty meal! I had lots of yummy dumplings and some noodles.

I also did Tai Chi in Hong Kong. Tai Chi is a martial arts practice where you make lots of slow, quiet movements to center your body and help you be healthy. When you get really good at Tai Chi, you can even use it to defend yourself, like karate. Just like karate, though, Tai Chi is mostly about quieting your mind and being healthy, never about beating people up. We learned a couple easy moves, then practiced them with the Tai Chi master.

In Asia, especially China and Japan, tea is very important. I bet you’ve seen your moms or dads drink tea by putting a little bag of stuff in a mug of hot water. Real Chinese tea is made very differently- there’s a whole ceremony involved. Instead of using a bag of tea, you use loose tea, the dried leaves of tea that you pour hot water over to make fresh, delicious-tasting tea. There are different kinds of tea leaves, too: black tea (“regular” tea), green tea, and even flower teas made from plants like jasmine and rose. There’s also a really special tea called Pu’er. Pu’er is special because it comes from fresh, young tea leaves that are picked only from trees high in the mountains of China. I bought a pretty jasmine tea with pretty pink buds. When you puts the buds in a cup, they open their flowers and make delicious flower tea!

I went to Beijing with a few of my friends. I had my 21^st birthday while I was there. I had the coolest birthday ever, because guess where I was? THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA! The Great Wall was built over 2,000 years ago to keep dangerous people out of China. It is so long, you can stretch it from Rhode Island to California, then all the way back again! Astronauts can even see it from space! I got to hike around the wall, and I took lots of pictures. It is amazing to be able to walk around on something that was built so long ago.

I also got to see all of the Olympics buildings. I saw the Bird’s Nest, which is the largest iron structure in the world! It looks really delicate from far away, but when you get up close you see how huge and strong it is. I also saw the WaterCube, where all the swimming stuff happened. It looked like a big square made out of bubbles! There was a fountain in front and water running down the sides of the glass windows, too. I watched the Olympics all the time last summer, so I was really happy to see all the places where the athletes competed.

One thing that made it tough to travel around China was the language. Chinese is really hard to learn, because it is a tonal language, which means the loudness or pitch makes the meaning different. You could say “Yu” in a really high voice, and then say “Yu” in a really low voice, and it would mean two completely different things, like “dog” and “teacup” (it doesn’t mean either of those, I just don’t know any real Chinese examples). This was the only country where nobody spoke any English at all, and it made it a lot harder to do things that are usually easy, like hail a cab or ask someone where a restaurant was. I liked the challenge- it was a good reminder that learning new languages is a really good way to meet new people, and also that you don’t have to speak the same language to talk to each other.

My trip to China was really fun. Ms. Laura told me that you guys are making dragon masks! That’s a really fun project, and there are dragons all around in China! Not real dragons, but lots of gold dragon statues and dragon decorations. In China, the dragon is a symbol of power and strength. I hope you have fun. By the time you do your art projects on Japan, I will be able to come visit you! Japan was my favorite country and I can’t wait to tell you about it in person.

Even Pirate Voyagers mix things up!

Hey guys! I hope you had a great time making Indian art, I bet they all look great! Sorry I just posted about Malaysia even though I went to Vietnam first. I forgot to put up Malaysia before Vietnam/Cambodia. Oops!
I spent the last five days in Penang, Malaysia, which was so much fun! I really love Malaysia, it is a beautiful country. Malaysia is divided into two parts: one part is called “peninsular” Malaysia, which means it is part of a big piece of land, but it’s surrounded by so much water that it’s almost an island. The other part is called Borneo Malaysia, because the rest of the country is part of a big island called Borneo, made up of lots of jungle. I spent my time in Peninsular Malaysia and a little island nearby called Langkawi.
Malaysia is cool because just like the United States, there are a few different cultures that live together. There are Malay people, whose families have come from Malaysia for a long time; there are Chinese people, and there are Indian people. The Chinese and Indian people have lived in Malaysia for a very long time; their families come from Malaysia, and they were born and grew up in Malaysia. Most Chinese and Indian people I talked to said they had never been to China or India, the place their ancestors (that’s a big long word for “really old family members”, like a great-great-great-great-grandpa) came from.
While I was in Penang, I went to the island of Langkawi. Langkawi is actually an archipelago (AR-kih-PEH-la-go), which is a fancy word for “lots of islands close together”. There are about 90 islands that make up the Langkawi archipelago, and they are all full of trees and very green. Most of them don’t have people on them. One of them, Pulau Payar, is a giant beach that takes up the whole island where people can snorkel and see really cool fish and turtles! “Pulau” means “Island” in Malay. To get there, my friends and I took the Langkawi ferryboat, which is a fast boat that takes people on short trips to the islands near Penang. Riding the ferry was fun, but since I live on a ship it was a lot like being at sea! While we were in Langkawi, we just relaxed and went to the beach. It was beautiful there, and we could see lots of small, very green islands around it. It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.
I ate some really tasty food in Malaysia. Because there are Malay, Chinese and Indian people in Malaysia, there’s also delicious Chinese and Indian food, along with Thai food, because Thailand is right next to Malaysia. I went to Little India one night, and had even better Indian food than I had in India! My favorite Indian food is a bread called naan. Naan bread looks sort of like pita bread, and is very soft and served hot. There is plain naan, but I also had garlic naan, which has either butter with garlic in it or little pieces of garlic on it, and kashmiri naan, which has little pieces of sweet dried fruit on top. All naan is super delicious, but my favorite is garlic naan.
I also had really delicious Thai food in Langkawi. I had a yummy soup made with coconut milk, lots of limes, and prawns, which are big shrimp. I also had the best rice I’ve ever eaten, with soft, delicious chicken and a spicy sauce on top. Mmmmmm!
Malaysia was a lot of fun, and it was nice to relax on the beach for a few days, because even though all I talk about to you guys is the fun stuff I do in different countries, when we’re sailing I have lots of homework. We will be in Vietnam tomorrow morning, and while I’m there I’ll be travelling to Cambodia! I will tell you all about both of those countries in about a week. Until then!

Ahoy from the Mekong River in Vietnam!

I just got back from Vietnam and Cambodia! Both places were really beautiful. Everyone was so friendly, I would love to go back. In Vietnam, there is a big market called the Ben Thanh Market where you can buy everything: food, clothes, shoes, jewelry, kitchen stuff. Whatever you want, it is probably hiding somewhere. It is very crowded and full of shop people yelling “What you want to buy, lady?” My favorite thing that I bought is a big sun hat!

I also saw water puppets in Vietnam. For water puppet shows, the puppeteers stand in water up to their waist (behind a curtain) and work with the puppets while they are in the water. Most of the puppets are fish, or ducks, or even dragons that can spit water out of their mouths! The shows tell different stories about the people who live by the water in Vietnam, and they are lots of fun to watch.

Cambodia was really amazing, too. I went to Angkor Wat, which is a big temple that is over 1,000 years old! All the temples in Siem Reap- the city where Angkor Wat is- are very old and made of big stones which have grown moss all over them. My favorite was a big temple in the jungle. This temple is special because for 400 years, it had no people in it. It was left alone in the jungle. When people discovered it, big trees had grown around the stones in the temple and made themselves part of it! I can’t wait to show you the pictures.

While I was in Siem Reap, I also rode an elephant! I rode on top of it on a little seat called a howdah, which is what the kings and queens of Cambodia rode on in parades. The elephant took us all around the Bauphon temple, which has really cool faces carved into its stones!

I had a great time learning about all the history in Cambodia & Vietnam! Next I am going to the island of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is different because it is part of China, but not part of China at the same time. Technically, Hong Kong belongs to the People’s Republic of China, but the people of Hong Kong don’t have to follow all of China’s rules- they make their own. While I am there, I am flying to Beijing, the capital of China. I am going to see the Great Wall of China, which you can see from outer space! I am also going to see the places where the Olympics were this summer! I am very excited. I will tell you my stories when I get back!