New Zealand!

Well, it has been a while since I updated this website. Many reasons for that, the biggest one being that I was busy with school assignments. Another main reason would be the fact that I’m quite lazy and on top of that, there must be something exciting to write about. The reason I’m updating now is there is in fact something to write about.

Since the 22^nd of December I’m in New Zealand, Queenstown to be precise. I am here to do my internship and of course the much needed traveling around. All students in my year will do their placements in the first half of 2008. Since we are all doing international tourism studies going abroad is mandatory. At first I wanted to go to a Spanish talking country to learn the language. However, in Macau I didn’t do Spanish too much which resulted in not taking the exam and therefore getting a bit behind. I am pretty certain that if I would do my placement in South America I would get lost easily and wouldn’t actually benefit much from it, so I choose a country where communication wouldn’t be an obstacle. With this realization my choices where also narrowed down dramatically. Since only my Dutch and English would be sufficient and the Netherlands wouldn’t be allowed, my choice eventually landed on New Zealand. I then applied for a placement in Christchurch, which was offered by the school. Four people would be applying for it but eventually I wasn’t chosen. The manager of that placement company had my CV and sent out emails to fellow tourism companies in New Zealand of which one eventually responded and offered me a placement. This all happened somewhere around mid to end October and this left me 2 months to prepare myself for traveling to what is almost exactly the opposite side of the world. Soon enough visa and flights were arranged and I was ready to go. In the meantime school got quite busy and I had to work on several projects, which consumed most of my time. I finally finished my last exam on Tuesday the 18^th of December.

Four days later I set of towards New Zealand. I flew via Los Angeles where I had to wait nine hours for my flight to Auckland. In LA I met up with Crystal, which I met before and in Malaysia and Hong Kong. It turned out to be a nice afternoon where I saw some parts of LA whether intentionally or unintentionally. Naturally with the strong euro backing me up I had to do some shopping and I bought a new 160 GB ipod. I saved over 100 euros with buying it there instead of back in Europe, which I’d say is a good deal. Crystal dropped me of back at the airport and I was set for my flight to Auckland. The jet lag already got to me then and as soon as I boarded the plane I fell asleep. I didn’t even notice that we took of and I woke up four hours later in the middle of the night. Luckily Air New Zealand is much better then Lufthansa which has a shitty entertainment system. ANZ gave me a private screen and remote, which gave me the ability to choose my own movies and music. I actually enjoyed this flight and no, I’m not paid by ANZ although I wouldn’t mind a small donation after this small marketing talk. So I arrived in Auckland two days later and missed Sunday the 23^rd of December. The reason for this is that I flew over the International Date Line that is set over the Pacific Ocean. I was therefore flying for the 22^nd into the 24^th. It’s a bit weird, but think about it and you’ll understand (mind you, I’ll be reading this story when I’m older and I have to think about it again, so the ‘you’ I’m referring to might actually be myself). Getting into New Zealand was much easier then getting into the US where they wanted two fingerprints and a picture. I had to wait at US customs for about an hour where it took me 10 minutes to get passed it in New Zealand.

In Auckland I had to wait for about 4 hours for my final flight to Queenstown. This wet fast enough since I first had to wait in line to check my luggage in again. The flight was a short one, one hour and 20 minutes, and obviously I slept through the whole thing. And then I finally arrived in Queenstown. In the arrivals hall I was searching for a couple of about my parents age that where wearing or holding something that indicates that they are from the company I am about to work for. I couldn’t find them but eventually found a girl with the mentioned clothes. Her name is Cortney and she was there to pick me up and bring me over to the holiday park. Since I just slept on the plane I didn’t notice much from the jet lag yet and I was quite hopeful that I would last the whole evening. I was introduced to Kenneth and Sandra, the owners of the holiday park once Cortney had brought me to them and found out they are gentle people and have the best intentions with me. Cortney showed me around the campsite so that I could familiarize myself a bit with it. Once back in the office Kenneth explained what I would be doing over the next few days. He wouldn’t through into the deep end as I expected but I am to follow a trainee program that’ll last for about two weeks. Another thing I didn’t really expect is the fact that the company will also let me go on trips and activities, which are offered in the office. Kenneth wanted me to get on a jet boat that day but they were too crowded so this wouldn’t happen. However on Boxing Day a trip was planned to Milford Sound, a famous fjord some 4 hours away from Queenstown.

That day I was introduced to the family I am living with. They turned out to be really nice and apparently Kenneth had another surprise for me (at least I wasn’t expecting it), which was that all food expenses are paid as well as the accommodation. Basically this means that all living costs are taken care of!

Since this evening was Christmas Eve, my host family (consisting of Dave and Rebecca which are the parents of Brittany and Victoria which are 11 and 8 respectively) had a lot of visitors and a party going on which I joined for a bit. Around 9 o’clock however I got really tired and decided to go to bed. Next day they couldn’t believe I slept through all the noise they made but I did.

First day on the job, Christmas day, I had to do some work around the campsite. This basically meant tidying up some rubbish that lying around in order to make it suitable for receiving guests. Not much to mention about this so I’ll just leave it at that. I still am feeling the jet lag actually so that day I went to bed around 10-ish to wake up real early, around 6, in order to make the coach that would pick me up at 6.45. New Zealand is the first country I have been where the trip to the attraction was more impressive than the actual attraction. It’s truly a magnificent country where there is so much to see. The trip of almost 5 hours just flew by. Milford sound itself is something terrific as well and well worth a visit. It’s also quite remarkable that some of the mountains where snow covered to a certain degree which even the bus driver thought was unusual. Who says the world is warming up?! There were also possibilities for taking helicopter flights over the valleys and cliffs but I didn’t do that. I arrived back home that day around 7 o’clock where dinner was waiting. I feel like I’m leading a rather luxurious life considering the benefits I get so far! Today is the next day in the story and I want to work around 10.30. Now everything is getting a bit more serious and Kenneth wanted me to explore the campsite better and see the accommodations for myself. Afterwards he is quizzing me about it to see if I know what to tell guests. By now I’m quite familiar with the park and accommodations layout and am learning the prices of all of them. In the afternoon however, Kenneth managed to get me on a jet boat trip after all. The drive towards the dock took about 45 minute and led over an old mining trail. It was basically a small road where we drove over in a big bus-like vehicle and had no protection what so ever. There was no tarmac on the road and I’m pretty sure accessing it by foot would be forbidden back in the Netherlands. But this is New Zealand and the driver found it fun to see people this scared. The boat trip was fantastic. However, the weather is really bad at the moment so we couldn’t see much since the rain kept gushing in our faces. With the speed of the boat the rain actually hurt a bit. This trip also marked the first lord of the rings movie spot I visited namely the part in fellowship of the ring where the riders of mordor are flooded by the river while Frodo was on his way to Rivendel. I didn’t recognize it at first but the boat driver had a picture of the scene and it was quite obvious after that.

Getting back also meant the end of the story since this was only a few hours ago. Again dinner was ready when I got back and I’m just relaxing a bit now and typing this story. Hope you liked it and if not, bummer.

Cheerio!

Moscow - St. Petersburg - Home! (Vodkatrain part IV)

It's strange now the school has started again and I am still about to finish my story about the vodkatrain. Been home now since the 16th of August already. Tonight I am actually planning to finish it all. After this is finished I will work on making a book-like version of all this and put all the pictures online, since I haven't done that yet. This is mostly due to my lazyness but also because since I got back home I spend a lot of time with people I hadn't seen in a while. Back to the story then. last time I stopped just before arriving in Moscow, so there is where I am going to continue from here on.

On that saterday the 11th of August we finally arrived in Moscow after a full 3-day train trip. Relieved as we where we got out of the train where we were met by our honcho. We were brought to a van that took us to our hostel. The hostel was a bit outside the city centre. Our honcho said the red square is reachable by foot, but it would take about 20 minutes. Our hostel seemed quite good, it was a shared dorm, but boys and girls were separated. We all refreshed before heading for a metro station that would take us near the red square. Actually we first went to a theatre because some people wanted to see a ballet and wanted to get tickets for the next days evening performance. I hadn't decided yet if I wanted to go, but upon arrival I decided to go anyway. It's like Yoko said; when in Moscow, you've got to see a ballet. After purchasing we headed over to the red square. It was still light outside but soon enough night started to kick in. Red square is pretty awesome, just for the fact that it's the red square. The st. basils cathedral is beautiful and looks even better litten up during nighttime. Before entering the red square you see a big red building which serves now as the national museum. In front of it is a big statue of a guy on a horse... I forgot to ask who it is... Everything looks really impressive. Lenin's mausoleum is also located on the red square and looks quite dull. However with the kremlin walls on the background it sort of looks like Lenin is guarded by its immensity and this gives a strong feeling of history and what the kremlin ment for Russia and the former Soviet Union. Speaking of it, the USSR is still vividly appearant in the Russian streetlife. A lot of stands and tourist shops surrounding the red square almost exclusively sell Soviet stuff, and a lot of museums in the city remind people of the not so distant history of the country. However, it is obvious that Soviet times are history since Moscow on first account really is a cosmopolitan city. Especially the neighbourhood surrounding red square breaths capitalism, money and progress: completely something different than the rest we had seen from Russia. I found Moscow quite stunning and I wasn't the only one. That night we didn't do much more. We went to an internet cafe and back to our hostel.

The next day we woke early to go to Lenins mausoleum. Not everybody went though, Helen and Jack didn't want to go. I can understand why, but I still wanted to go for the sake of being able to say afterwards I've seen it. Not the best argument, but that's just how it is. We had to stand in line for an hour and were inside for not even 30 seconds. Lenin was lying there in a black suite lit up by lamps. I had my hands in my pockets but even that was seen as disrespectful because some guard came over asking me to get my hands out of my pockets. We had to keep walking as well, and in no time we were outside again. Lenin looked more like a doll since his body is preserved with the use of wax. Every 18 months he receives a full treatment and every 2 months a minor one. And imagine this, he actually wanted to be buried next to his mother in St. Petersburg... Outside we walked passed graves of significant Soviet leaders including Stalins.
Afterwards we walked through the park of the kremlin towards the entrance of the kremlin. prices to enter where quite outrages. If I remember well it was 250 roubles to enter if you aren't a student (not all of us where) and something like 40 for students. Never seen such a price difference, but so be it. Luckily I had a student card on me so I had the discount price. Afterwards I found out we have to pay seperately for the armoury (a museum within the kremlin which is filled with treasures and such). The armoury was way more expensive even for a student, so I decided not to get in. Steve, Dave and I just went around the kremlin grounds before going out again. We hung around for a bit, had lunch and wandered around the tourist stalls before chill in the park. By that time Dave and I lost Steve since he has the tendency to wonder off without notifying anyone. We rendez-vouz-d with the group in the afternoon and some of us went to see the insides of St. Basils cathedral, as did I. It wasn't as impressive as from the outside but it was worth it anyway. We then proceeded to the theatre for the ballet. The theatre looked nice upon entering, compete with balconies and stuff and I must admit that ballet itself wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it still isn't something I would do again in the near future.

The next day we headed to 'Sparrow Hill' where we could witness the skyline of Moscow to the fullest. However, it's not as spectacular as Hong Kong I'm afraid... Afterwards we to a local market and to a vodkamuseum where we drank vodka with certain added flavours which tasted real nice. Next we went to the Church of Christ the saviour which is a big white church with golden towers. Unfortunately we could not enter because most of us wore shorts which weren't permitted. Afterwards we headed for the park again and ended the day in a local pub.
The next day would mark the last day in Moscow and me, Tash and Dave went to the museum of revolution in the morning. Next we went to a park to chill out for a bit before having lunch and continued to do not to much. It was a relaxing day and not much mentionable happened. The ending of the day wasn't perfect by all means. The thing is that the night before we would depart to St. Petersburg a train was bombed between Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was the exact same train as ours but one night earlier. The Russian authorities assured that all trains would as scheduled that day from 3 pm and we arrived that evening at 0.15 am for the 0.30 am train. At first it was delayed half an hour but this became more and more and eventually we left by approcimately 4 am. It would only be a 7 hour trainride and we were supossed to enter St. Petersburg by 8 am the next day but this was not possible any more. I was hugely dissapointed by this since I already would have one full day in St. Petersburg because of our plane leaving the next day at 12 am. Things got worse however because when we all woke up we were only half way yet and not much later we stopped completely. Nobody knew what was happening or when we would arrive. Every once in a while the train would go again, but only for a short amount of time. During the stops airconditioning would be turned off and the temperature would rise immediatly. Even the train conductor ended up wearing nothing but his jogs. Eventually we arrived at 11 pm that day, a delay of 14 hours and Jamie and I only had 10 hourse left before having to depart for the airport. We then decided to just stay awake and wonder around St. Petersburg by night.

At 11 pm I was already quite tired but I might be in St. Petersburg only this once so I had to make the most out of it anyway. I already thought Moscow was awesome and beautiful, but St. Petersburg is way better in that aspect. Although I have only seen it by night now, I can tell it's like walking through a museums of buildings. The only people on the streets were either drunks or (Chinese) tourists. It was amazing that at 3 am we saw 4 tourbusses stop around the centre square. Having that said St. Petersburg is a city which I would love to visit again. It's a city of palaces, statues and cathedrals of the kind I've never seen before, and as I said it's like walking through a musuem of architecture.

At 8 am that morning we went back to the hostel to pack our stuff and say goodbye to the group. We had such a cool group and it was a pity to leave them and I hope to see them again in the future if I can. If everything goes according to plan I might see Dave soon enough since he says he wants to come to the Netherlands. Steve and I intend to go running from bulls next summer in Pamplona, Spain, and you never know, I might meet some of the others again as well.
That morning of the 16th we left the hostel at 9 am to go to the airport. First we took the subway to a certain stop from which a bus would take us to the airport. The bus was really late and we started to worry, but we reached the airport in time. it was the weirdest airport I've ever seen since all people had to line up in fron of the building to get there bags checked even before entering. Than we had to enter the building to get in line for our check in desk. However, this wasn't our desk yet. First they check a list and if you are on there we could proceed. There our handlugage was checked and finally we could proceed to the desk where a long waiting line was formed. Once we were finally checked in we had to wait in line for customs again. This process is so inefficient, it's unbelievable. But finally we made it through and set off back to home!

We arrived 2 hours and 45 minutes later in Köln where we were awaited by our family. It was good to see everyone again after such a long time. Since I hadn't slept at all for more than 24 hours at that point I felt like I was on drugs or something. My dad saw me and decided to not let me drive... probably a good call. After an hours drive I was back home, and noticed everything was the same as always. Not suprising, but it still felt weird, sort of an anticlimax. I felt like that for a couple of days before it went and over the passed weeks I met almost everybody again I know back here. It's now hard to imagen everything actually happened but writing this took me back a bit and I feel like going on a trip as soon as I can. And I will, because coming January we all have to go on an 25 weeks internship in a foreign country. I am now aiming at a place in New Zealands, Autralia or the Pacific. School has started again and I am in my first week now. Back to normal completely, but my class is cool so I'll manage. This marks the end of my story. It was a good experience and I would love to relive it all again. Unfortunately I can't but I hope to have a similar experience again.

For now,

Thank you, bye bye!

Lake Baikal, not in a nutshell (Vodkatrain part III.b)

It's been a while now since my last update. Many things have happened, but most importantly; I'm back home! If you'll remember (or indeed, just read the previous update) last time I put something on here I was still in Irkutsk, ready to hop on the train that would depart for Moscow. Since it has been 2 weeks ago all of this occured I'll try to do my best to give a complete as possible story. Basically I still have to report on the whole Russia part since the last update was just a short one... so anyway, here we go...

When we departed from Ulaanbatar we were already told the bordercrossing could take as long as 12 hours. Luckily, it didn't take that long for us, since we could continue our journey already after 11.5 hours! This basically tells the whole story about that period of time since all we could do was just hang around and wait for stuff to happen, which it obviously didn't. This part of the journey would take us a similar amount of time as from Beijing to Ulaanbatar. The main difference was that instead of two days like that one, this was two nights. The whole waiting part was during daytime so as soon as we got moving again nightfall was kicking in soon enough. In the train we met our first Russians, a father and son. They were travelling with various bottles of vodka that without any doubt took us as a complete surprise. It turned out to be a fun evening after all.

The next day we arrived in Irkusk and were greeted by our honcho. We were loaded into a bus and taken straight to lake Baikal. From what I've seen Irkutsk seems a nice enough town but we didn't visit it much in the end. The trip to baikal didn't take long and we arrived after about one and a half hours. The weather was really shitty, very clouded which gave everything a bit of a depressing feel to it. I'm sure the baikal area looks great when the sun shines, but it wasn't that obvious with the weather we had. We were brought to our accommodation which was actually really nice. It was a big wooden building with several rooms, just a 5 minute walk into town from lake baikal itself. After checking in and arranging which room goes to who, we went for a walk. The honcho wanted to show us the lake and took us uphill where we had to take a chairlift to go up higher. This chairlift was probably the slowest chairlift I've ever seen or been on in my life. It took us seriously 15 minutes for about 100 meters or so. Anyway when we came up the hill it was very foggy. Hence, we couldn't see much. We kept walking again and came to a spot which is supposed to be an amazing lookout place over the lake. Unfortunately we didn't see anything because of the weather, so this plan didn't work as well as our honcho wanted it to work. Not much we could do but head back for the amazing chairlift and head down again. Coming back down we just walked down passed the lake again and saw the same weird guy we saw on previously. I forgot to mention the first time, but we saw a guy that could seriously compete with Chuck Norris and probably win. This guy was pure evil disguised as a pure evil russian. You had to be there... Anyway, upon reaching the village again we saw some boats no doing much, so we decided we wanted to go on a boat trip. After some negociation (which didn't work well for us at all) we managed to get on a boat for an hour. The great plan was to eventually jump off, adventurous rascals as we were. The boatsmen first didn't let us because the water is supposed to be freezing cold, but after some persuation we could. And we did. And yes, the water was indeed freezing cold. Nevermind that, at least I can say I swam in the worlds deepest lake and on top of that we all had a blast.
That evening we didn't really do much. We had dinner at the accommodation since it started raining severly when we wanted to depart for a restaurant. That evening we just stayed inside. John, Yoko, Tash and me played some cards, and Tash did the occasional dancing now and then.
The next day we set off for a walk first because some of the pansies didn't go on the boat and wanted to swim off the shore. Before that we actually went to a local market where we bought some stuff and John showed off a bit by demonstrating his excellent bargaining skills. It went something like this: John wanted to buy an extremely cool matruska doll of former Russian presidents. It had Putin painted on the front. So he after hearing prices of similar kind of those things he decided to offer the lady selling it 600 roubles to buy it. She stared at him for a bit before answering "no, 550".
We went back to the accommodation and hung out for a bit before Steve and me decided to take a small hike up a hill to a observatory we've seen from the boat the previous day. After about an hour or so we arrived there and saw there was a fence surrounding it. Behind a the fence was a the most vicious dog we had ever seen and it was ready to attack. However, it seemed it was attached to a line that was attached to a fence so we considered to walk around the complex and see if there was an easy to access it. We found a gate which so poor constructed we could both perfectly fit through it (keep this in mind, this bit is essential before reading the next part). Everthing seems fine at first; no evil Russian guards who wanted to make us political prisoners what so ever. So I started to pose in front of the observatory to take a picture and stuff. Suddenly we heard the noise of a chain and barking. We looked at the right side of the building and saw a dog (whether it was the same one as before or not) approaching us with great speed and before knowing it we were running as fast as we could back to the fence, naturally assuming that behind it we would be perfectly safe. Of course, if could get through it the dog wouldn't have a chance reaching us any more (right!). To make matters worse, I got stuck in the fence with my body (fat bastard) and the gate just swung upon. It was never locked! The dog was luckily attached to a chain (it probably was the same dog as before) and we couldn't stop laughing. We went back inside to actaully take the pictures and look inside some windows. Steve then spotted some Russian soldiers coming out of the building and yes we run for it again. Although I wanted to experience Russia to the fullest, spending some nights in Russian prison didn't really appeal to me that much so we kept running for a while.
Afterwards we walked around for a bit before heading for a restaurant back in town. The rest of the group went for a sauna while we were doing our running excersice so we met them afterwards in the restaurant. The evening we didn't really do much. It was quite late already before we came back at the accommodation. Dave and I went to do a bit of nigh photography and some beers, but not much interesting happened.

The next day was moving day and in the morning we had to pack our stuff before heading back to Irkutsk where the train to Moscow would depart at around 4 pm. We departed from Baikal at around 12-ish and had lunch in Irkutsk. We went to an internet cafe there, which was the place I had my last update before arriving home. The train left for Moscow as predicted around 4 pm. The traintrip would take a good 78 hours which immediately marks the longest consecutive time I've been on a train. The trip was doable since we went drunk the first night and just hung around the other two (!) nights.
I'm going to leave it at that for now. We arrived in Moscow on saturday the 11th which marked my return to Europe after almost 7 months of absense. I will discuss the Moscow and St. Petersburg the next time since a lot happened as well...

thank you, bye bye!

Lake Baikal in a nutshell (Vodkatrain part III.a)

Since I haven't got much time to properly update my website, I'm going to write a small story about what happened since last update. First thing, we are in mother Russia! After a 2 night traintrip we arrived in Irkutsk from Ulaanbatar. The bordercrossing took an amazing 11.5 hours but eventually we got through. After arrival we were awaited by our honcho that brought us to the bus that took us to Lake Baikal. We stayed in a guesthouse. The first day we walked around first and went on a boat on the lake. There we jumped in the lake which was freezing cold. It was really good. After that we had dinner and went back. The next day we went for a walk again and some people went swimming again. that evening me and Steve went to find an observatory point up the hill, which eventually we did find. We climbed through the fence and wanted to make pictures when a dog came running towards us. Scared as we were we run for it, but luckily the dog was chained to a fence. This could have been quite nasty, but afterwards we couldn't stop laughing. After that we had dinner again and me and Dave did some nightphotography. The next day we took the bus at 11.30 back to Irkutsk where we are now waiting for the train that will bring us to Moscow. This will take us 3 days, since it is now wednesday afternoon and we will arrive on saturday afternoon. Big trip!

Next time I will try to go more into details, but now we have to go, so I can't

thank you, bye bye!

Ulaanbatar - Ger Camp - Ulaanbatar (Vodkatrain part II)

It's the 4th of august now and I am posting from a post office/internet cafe in Ulaanbatar. We just arrived back from the ger camp we spend 2.5 days at. In my last post I was a bit short about the traintrip we had from Beijing to Ulaanbatar and I forgot to mention a bit which was heaps of fun. The thing is that the railway in China is different from the one in Mongolia, and at the border crossing we had to change the wheels of all carriages before we could enter Mongolia. Once our passports were taken away by border attendees we had to wait before they would return. The compartments were opened and we were free to roam the platform and shop. We went to the shop to get some snacks and stuff and just when we wanted to go back on the the train it took off to go and change the wheels. John, Jamie and me were just too late while the others were just in time. Result was that we had to wait on the platform for about two hours untill it would return. Very boring indeed, so we decided just to go walk towards the hanger where the train was at and try to hop on it again or at least see how they change the wheels. Although we were told not to go off the platform we started walking towards it and just before we reached the hanger we saw the train move again a bit towards the platform. Thinking we were in deep we just stood there in doubt untill we saw that most carriages were lifted in the air and that the train couldn't return yet. A bit nervous we entered the hanger were we saw the others in our carriage just looking outside the windows. We thought the Chinese would be pissed off when they would see us entering the hanger, but on the contrary, they basically ignored us and when it became clear to them that we actually belonged in the carriage they even opened it for us so that we could hop on. Quite something that could have gone wrong but turned out to be a lot of fun. By the way, it's quite amazing that the wheels have to be changed anyway, I've seen anything like that. Thankfully the tracks between Mongolia and Russia are the same!

Back to more recent events then. The rest of the day after arrival we spent in UB. The city isn't much special, quite ugly actually, but we had time to go on the net, refresh and just hang out a bit. The next day we took off early to first go to a local monastry and afterwards to the Ger camp. Around 1 pm we arrived in the Ger Camp and immediately had lunch. The area where the camp is located in is amazing and nothing like UB. On the way we saw heaps of cows, horses (of course) and the occasional yak. The gers itself were much like the Yurz we slept earlier in at the Karakul lake near Kashgar although instead on sleeping on the group we had beds this time and a stove in the middle where we could make a fire to stay warm. Because there was no sun the first day it was quite chilly and we lit the fire right away. We soon found out that it's either cold or really hot because the fire was clearly to much for the small ger. Anyway it was nice anyway, it felt like going back in time when providing yourself with a good fire to keep warm. That day we didn't do too much, just hung around a bit, went to a local family to drink fermented horse milk (3% alcohol) which tasted horrible, in my opinion. That night, after dinner we decided to make a big camp fire up on the hill near our gers and went into the woods to collect some wood to get the fire started. At one point we managed to have a big one and enjoyed it untill Sana (our Honcho) received a phone call that he had to put it off. We decided to just let it run out and leave but 10 minutes later a car approached and the site manager insisted that we had to put it off and warned Sana that he would report this. While this was totally unfair, since it was our idea to do it, we saw the guy was unreasonable and there was not much we could but putting the fire off, which we then did. A bit dissapointed we left the fire and returned to our ger. We had some local vodka and went to sleep.
The next day we woke up early to have breakfast. The idea was to go horse riding afterwards, since we reserved 10 horses. However, most of the horses been given out to a group of Japanese and therefore we had to wait untill 11 am before they gathered enough horses to go. The horse trip was (for me at least) absolutely amazing, and one of the highlights of the whole trip. They were asking people who could ride horse because there were a couple of rough ones and more particular; they were supposed to be fast! So I said that I could and I was given the best horse of the group, although I've driven a horse only once before. Anyway, the first half half hour I was led anyway untill I asked if I could off by myself. I could, and I could say the horse was just amazing. It wasn't the biggest one but it was responding amazingly well. And it was fast! As soon as I tried to get it gallop it did it immediately. I was going real fast for a moment but got it to stop pretty quickly because Steve's horse was following it, tripped and fell. Luckily Steve and the horse were okay, but the horse caretakers weren't too happy. The rest of the trip I was keeping it tamed, although sometimes that was really hard because it just wanted to go and run. When were heading back to camp two hours later there was a long stretch of land and my horse was almost impossible to keep calm anymore. I then asked one of the caretakers if I was allowed to go nuts the last couple of hundred meters and they allowed me. I let go of the rope and horse just took off real fast. This was absolutely amazing and by encouraging it the horse just went faster and faster untill we had to stop when we reached the camp. I was completely psyched and didn't want to stop anymore. Horses rule! I asked if I could take the horse for a ride that evening by myself and Sana said I could. We then had lunch and proceeding by chilling out for a few hours. Around 6 Tash, Dave and me headed over to the horse camp and found that the horses were taken by the damn Japanese again and we had to wait untill they returned. When we gotten three horses afterwards they were all very tired and the trip was nowhere near as fun as the one in the morning. A bit dissapointed we returned after half an hour. I guess you can't have it all... We had dinner afterwards and spend the night just hanging around a bit.
The next morning we wanted to get up around 5 am to see the sun rising. We did get up at that time, but were to sleep to see it all trough and went back to sleep. Later that morning we had breakfast at 9 before getting in the bus that brought us back to UB at 10. The trip took about an hour and we went back to the hotel we were before to leave our bags and charge some electronic devices. After that we headed straight to an internet cafe where I am now...

However, during all this, Jamie received a call from home that her grandmother passed away. She gotten messages from her parents before that her grandma was not doing well. Although she saw it coming it's still a mayor setback, especially since she can't be at the funeral. She will continue at the journey and it is to us to cheer her up. Anyway, it's a setback and I wish Jamie the best for the rest of the trip...

thank you, bye bye!

Vodkatrain first Stretch - Beijing to Ulaanbatar (Vodkatrain part I)

The day after the last post on my website the vodkatrain program finally started. At 5 pm on July the 28th we would meet our honcho and our fellow travelmates. Before that me and Jamie went to see the forbidden city and square of heavenly peace. Originally we wanted to go see Mao's body as well but when we arrived there the mausoleum was closed for public due to restauration. bummer. Instead we went to the Congress building of the Chinese government, not suprisingly called 'the great hall of the people'. Lonely Planet warned it would be rather boring, but stubborn as we are we decided to go for it anyway... and dull it was... After that we went to the forbidden city which was loaded with tourists, mainly chinese tourgroups, but I enjoyed it anyway. Although Beijing doesn't strike me as the greatest city on earth, this bit is definately worth a visit. Like I said we met our group that day at five. The group consists of 4 Aussies, 3 Brittish, 1 Swiss and two Dutch (guess who, us!). That night we went out for a communial dinner with our honcho called mark. Mark is a story on it self, actually, since only after three days nobody really trusted him anymore. It sort of started at dinner, where we all were starting to know each other and me and Jamie told that we booked tickets for an acrobat and kungfu show for the following night. Mark then asked us where we booked it and started moaning about how bad it was and how we got ripped off. Ok, fine, matter a fact, I would know a bad acrobat or kungfu show if I saw one, and I was sure we paid a reasonable price for it, because in the end the acrobat show that mark suggested was even more pricy. Nobody was really impressed with his behaviour towards us but we dropped the matter and just went on with our dinner. We ate Peking Duck which is food everyone should have eaten once visited Beijing. It's good but a bit fatty. That evening we didn't do much, just hung out a bit and went off to sleep.

The next day Jamie and I visited the summer palace with Steve and Tasha, two of our travel mates. We set off around nine and after a half hour taxi drive we reached our goal. Again; completely packed with tourists. I've showed my dislike about touristy place before on this website I guess and ofcourse this was a setback but the summer palace is none the less well worth visiting. It's one of those places where you understand why it's so packed, much as like the forbidden city. I probably liked the summer palace even better. After that we took the cab back, first to a camera store where Jamie and I dropped off our cameras to get them fixed after our little desert expedition. We handed them in the previous night and thankfully they were fully operational again. After that we headed back to the hotel where we ate pizza at a nearby restaurant. Afterwards we met up with the others. We wanted to go to a local market but at the end Jamie and I ended up in a shopping area due to lack of time. I bought a new phone (my old one didn't survive my brave effort of teaching it how to swim back in Hong Kong) and did some souvenir shopping and headed for the theatre where our shows but be. Not really expecting something great, we sat down at 5.30 for the first our of two shows; the acrobat one ...and I can say it was really something that was better than my expectations. I was sort of expecting something sickish, you know crazy stunts where people do crazy stuff with there bodies, but it was really something classy and impressive. The show lasted for an hour and we had a one hour brake before the kungfu show would start. As I expected this show was even better, with a story about a guy (called Kong Kong) who became obsessed with kungfu and had to conquer difficulties to become a true master... really Chinese I suppose. The whole bit was really enjoyable to watch and I wasn't bored one moment. Mark could say whatever he wants, but that was definately worth the money. We were supposed to meet back at the hotel at 9.30 that evening but due to the very anoying subway system of Beijing we were about half an hour late and heard from the guys that Mark actually couldn't get tickets for the so called better acrobat show and they had to settle with a crappy one. On top of that he didn't manage to book as a minivan to the great wall as he promised because of bad weather forecast. We none the less wanted to do it and ended up booking one through the hotel which was more expensive. Nobody of the group was very fond of him anymore after that...

The next day we got up at 6 am to get to the great wall. We didn't go to the part next to Beijing that was completely restaured. Instead we went to a bit which was a four hour drive out of Beijing and wasn't restaured, only the first bit. I would be a 10 k walk on the wall, and I can tell it was much harder than probably any of us thought. Since Beijing is probably the most poluted city in the world (in the last 3 weeks, the city had 2 hours of sunshine in total according to locals) this part was still very misty and damp, and it was hard to walk in these humid conditions. Soon everybody was sweating like mad, also because the wall is not built on flat ground, but on endless amount of hills; very steep climbs were followed by very steep descents. I was great though, the view was more than once spectacular and it we didn't have rain at all. It started raining after we had lunch (which was included) and set off for Beijing again that evening around 5.30 pm. Arriving back at Beijing at around 8.30 that evening we were all quite hungry and went for pizza again. After that we didn't do much more, just played a bit of cards... call it preparation for the upcoming traintrip to Ulaanbatar.

The next day a van was waiting to bring us to the train station. We had to be there at 6.20 am! The train departed at 7.45 am and took a mere 31 hours to reach Ulaanbatar where I am posting from now. The traintrip was rather smooth and time flew. The dorms are comfy, but only slighty better than the hard sleeper we are 'used to'. We basically were just killing time with talking about previous trips, playing cards, reading and listening to music (since John brought portable speakers, mine died ages ago). Ulaanbatar is an ugly city, but people are nice and know English pretty well. Tomorrow we're gonna set off for a Ger camp on the countryside where we will spend 2 nights. Then we will go off to Russia, to lake Baikal. Right now I'm off for dinner.

thank you, bye bye!

Kashgar Desert - Urumqi - Shanghai, ow no, I meen Hong Kong - Beijing! (China trip part VI)

So now the promised long(er) update. I arrived in Beijing today and checked in into the hotel we had to check in anyway tomorrow. This now saves us the moving trouble and we know that everything is fine and we are on the list for tomorrow. Like the tittle suggests, instead of going to Shanghai we ended up in Hong Kong. After leaving Kashgar on the 20th we had a 24 hour train to Urumqi as planned. Upon arrival there we had about 6 hours to spare so we decided to check if I already would have my invitation. Oh yeah, I forgot to update that part as well. Just after we went to the desert, on the 19th of July, we printed the invitations for the Russian visa and soon found out that my name and passport number were wrong. This was a big problem. I therefore called Killroy to ask if they could change it... they couldn't. What I had to do was to apply for one online, which I did. The invite would be send to me the next day. Back to Urumqi; in the hours we had to spare I checked if I had the invitation. Instead I got a question from the website asking me whether I wanted the original instead of a copy since Shanghai doesn't issue Russian visas without the original. This came as a shock, since we would have a train to there in three hours. Half panicing we thought of the options and called around to see what we could do. The Shanghai consulate didn't want to help us (bloody Russians) so we had to fly back to Hong Kong. Going to the China Southern Airlines office we found that the cheapest option was flying to Guangzhou the same evening at 7.55 pm. We quickly bought the tickets and headed back to the train station to pick up our luggage which we left there and try to sell the train tickets to Shanghai we already had. There was a long line for the counter that handles refunds. While walking towards the line with my tickets in my hand some Chinese came over and asked for our tickets. Since we were in a rush we sold them our tickets for about 90% of what we paid for it. I guess not a bad deal since we didn't know how much we could get back from the actual office. And so, in the middle of the night after a 5 hour flight we arrived in Guangzhou...

The next day we took the bus to Hong Kong and arrived in the afternoon. We stayed there for four days and not much special happened. I met up with some people such as Patrick and Bart and finally got the Russian visa, along with the Mongolian. Yesterday (July 27th) we took the train to Beijing and arrived there today. The rest is basically history. What I forgot to type yet is the Camel trip story which we did in the Taklamakan desert 3 days before all the troubles started.

The desert trip started on monday where we were picked up in the lobby of the hotel by our driver and tour guide. We first went to the supermarket where we had to buy 40 (!) bottles of drinking water. We also bought some instant noodles and other light food and finally went on our way to the desert. On the way we bought 5 water melons for as much as 1 (!) euro. We arrived at the edge of the desert at around noon local time. The camel man told us that he didn't want to leave at that time since it was the hottest period of the day. Instead we had to wait 3 hours. We waited first at the artificial lake which borders the desert and made a round on a quad bike, which was very cool. After three hours of boredom we finally departed. Three camels were mounted with our stuff (drinks, food, tents) and we set off. The camelman was walking up front, pulling the camels, while the three of us were on the camel backs. We already noticed some heavy winds coming up that first day and one hour into the trek (and already surrounded by stunning sand dunes) a huge sand storm started blasting. Jamie immediately lost her cap and I had troubles keeping mine. Sand was getting everywhere; nose, ears mouth and unfortunately into our cameras, we noticed afterwards because both of ours stopped working. We ended up 3 hours later a local farm house where, due to the wind, we had to spend the night. That evening we had kebabs for dinner, because we decided to buy a goat from the farmer (10 euros only !). We then saw how the camel man killed it and stripped it completely to prepare it for dinner. It was quite a funny sight for some reason and the dinner was great! The next day the wind was gone and so where the clouds. This ment that it was hot! Not much really happened that day since we only walked for 7 hours or so. It was not only sand we saw since we were still basically ad the desert edge, but not and then we came into the 'classical' desert landscape which was very impressive (and again: hot!). That night we stayed in the tent, at least, that's what the intensions where. However, since only one tent was working the guide and camel man had to sleep outside. We then decided to do the same and so we ended up outside under the bright night sky where we saw the biggest amount of stars I've ever seen... how romantic...
The next day we got up early to head back to the camp. It was even hotter than the day before, but luckily we were back after two hours. At the camp we were picked up by a new driver and headed back to Kashgar. It was a very memorable trip and a good end to our Kashgar days. The next was my birthday as I mentioned, and everything went wrong, but right then, after the tour everything was very ok, as it is now....

So, next thing is the vodkatrain. The tour starts tomorrow as I mentioned, so hopefully (and most likely) our trouble days are now over. 20 more days till I'm back home!

bye bye!

Finally Russian and Mongolian visa

It's been a while since my last post and a lot has happened. We were originally planning to go to Shanghai for out Russian visa, but due to curtain circumstances this didn't happen and we had to make last minute arrangements to apply for it at Hong Kong. So all the way back to where we started. Now both the Mongolian and Russian visas are in our passports and today we're finally heading off for Beijing!

I will try to update the whole story asap.

bye bye!

Kashgar - Yengisar - Yarkand - Sunday market (China trip part VI)

Last time I sort of ended with saying we had street food the night we came back form lake Karakul. Most of that street food is based on meat and most of it is some form of kebab. Well, people who know me also know that I like kebab. So I ate plenty. The next day I got my punishment however. I am still not quite sure if it were the kebabs or a some icecream I ate before, but my stomach didn't agree with it.

The day after we came back from Karakul we decided to go to Yengisar, Yarkand and stay the night in a village near Yarkand. At first we had trouble finding the right bus station for getting there but after some asking around and a bit of luck we ended up in the right bus... well, minivan. The road was extremely bumpy so we jumped up and down from our seats most of the time. At the end of the 1.5 hour trip, we reached Yengisar and my stomach started to feel bad. I thought it would go better once I would be able to get out of the van but it didn't. At one point it was so bad I just walked in a random store and asked for a public toilet. Since most people here can't read or speak Chinese (I used a mandarin phrasebook to explain) somebody else was called to read it. At one point three people were dealing with my request for a toilet. In the meantime things couldn't get better. While I was striving to get rid of whatever I needed to get rid of, Jamie got stung by a wasp in her stomach. Of course she was in pain as well so there we sat, basically in a village that can be classified as in the middle of nowhere. After a little while they understood what I meant and one guy brought me to a toilet. Of course it was just a hole in the ground but it was not my time to be picky. I sat there for perhaps half an hour but afterwards I didn't feel better. I told Jamie we should take a bus to Yarkand and we went on our way to the bus station. But I kept feeling worse and worse and when we crossed a police station I went to ask for a toilet again. They agent said they didn't have one (right!) and put us in a cab that brought us to a hotel. There we decided to stay the night since it was of no use to continue our journey like this. After an hour or two I started to feel better and the stomach ache disappeared completely. We walked around a bit after that. Yengisar is a town that's famous in the region for their knife production. I decided that I wanted one for myself, and Jamie as well, so we visited some shops. There were two types of knives there, production models and hand made models. The hand made models are more expensive and most of the time not even on display but in a cupboard somewhere locked away. When we came however some shops showed us the handmade. In one particular one we saw two that looked rather the same but have different arabic carvings in them. We wanted those. After some bargaining we got them for a good price. Then Jamie surprised me with saying that this was her (early) birthday present for me. That came as a suprise and it's really nice of her. After that we headed back for the hotel and said good night...

The next day we took the bus to Yarkand and decided to just take the bus back to Kashgar at the end of the day. On our way to there the road was again very bumpy. The tires felt like they were hitting the frame of the wheel all the time and yes, after a while we had a flat tire. The driver just put us out of the van, told us to walk a bit and just took off. Not really knowing what was happening of what would happen we just started walking. After about 20 minutes he came back with, luckily, a new tire and we could continue our journey. Yarkand was a good town to visit. Like most towns here it has a old Uyghur part and a new (always ugly) Chinese part. We had to search a bit but eventually we found the old town. Visiting that area is like going back in time. People transport themselves on wooden vehicles which is pulled by mules. Handicrafts are the biggest source of income in it's cool to see people working wood and iron and making pretty cool stuff without big machinery. The whole town had a high 'aladin' feel to it if you know what I mean. On the edge of the old town there is a bige mosque, a cemetary and a town of some lady that ment much to the region. Admission was 10 Yuan (1 euro). It was interesting to visit this although the mosque wasn't that special or anything. People where just praying and I felt (Jamie couldn't get in) a bit unwelcome. I can imagen though...
We headed back to the bus after a couple hours of walking around and had a 3 hour trip back to Kashgar, where we arrived at 9 pm Beijing time. I was still a bit frightened to eat local meat so we decided to eat at John's.

The next day was (is) sunday and this means big market day for Kashgar. The sunday market is devided into the lifestock market and well the other stuff market. We first visited the lifestock market which is an experience on its own. Where I said visiting the old town like going back in time, I guess time travelling didn't stop there. This lifestock market had a variaty of cows, sheep, goats, mules and other animals. It also had some foodstalls on the side where sheep where already waiting to be turned into kebabs. It's hard to explain what it looked like, I hope pictures will give some impression. After the lifestock market we headed over to the 'normal' market which was big and full of people. All kinds of stuff was sold there; carpets, knives, other fabrics, food and some touristy stuff. In total we spent a couple of hours on both markets before walking back to the hotel.

And now I'm here again updating my website. Tomorrow we'll be doing our three day camel tour... really excited to be going. AFter that we have a day 'off' (my birthday) and then onto Shanghai where we should arrive on the 23rd. We have the train tickets by now so that's settled. I'll be uploading pictures after this, so check out my webalbum soon.

thanks you, bye bye!

Kashgar - Lake Karakul (China trip part V)

In my last post I mentioned that we would take the plane to Kashgar the next day. So on the 9th at 8.55 am we got on our plane. It was a bit confusing at first because the flight didn't appear on the screens in the terminal. At the check-in counter however there was no problem and we got our boarding card, which said we had to wait at gate 21. When Jamie wanted to check in her bag, the scanner picked up two magnets she bought in the Philipines. For some stupid reason she couldn't bring them with her. She therefore had to take out everything in her bag in order to find them. This took around half an hour. It's still unclear why she had to take them out anyway. Arriving at gate 21 after that, the flight was still not on the monitor. Eventually we found it, but it said gate 2. Confused, we asked the personal there what the deal is with this flight. He assured us that we had to wait at gate 21. Eventually we found out that it is actually an international flight to Islamabad in Pakistan and it would make a stopover at Kashgar. That's why it also didn't appear on the monitors in the domestic terminal. Quite confusing...

All 'problems' asside, we arrived at Kashgar as planned and took a taxi to Noor Bish hotel, because according to Lonely Planet this was the cheapest option for us. Arriving there we were just refused, saying the hotel is closed, while we seen guests around! Unbelievable... And it gotten worst from there; in the next hotel, when the receptionist saw us approaching, he just duck under the counter! I've never seen anything like this, and it looks stupid as well, because ofcourse we have seen him do it. Not the brightest guy I say...
The third hotel was friendlier and told us it was full but gave us a suggestion for another hotel. We didn't follow it because we found another one instead. It's called the Seman hotel and we are staying there currently. It's a good hotel and it has a small travel agency in the lobby. After check in and organising the room we went to bar called John's cafe for breakfast and travel information in the area. We really want to do a camel trip through the desert and we were hoping he could arrange this for us. This was not to be. The only thing they had was 1 hour thingy in a small part of the desert. It's supossed to be really touristy so this didn't appeal to us. We went to the agency in the lobby. The boss of that agency spoke very good English and knows how to sell his tours. He first insisted we should be friends, well, why not... and after that we started discussing what we wanted. He said he could offer us the camel trip and told us the price. It all sounded really good and we went to the city afterwards, considering our options and to count the days we have to see what we could do. I think this was really the first time I had a real cultureshock here in Asia. This area of China really has nothing to do with well, China. The majority, by far, are Arabs. You won't hear much Chinees here, and the people don't look like Chinese either. It's actually quite a weird, or sad, story. It's obvious that China just want his part for its oil, or just to keep the country big or whatever. The city has one of the biggest statues of Mao in the whole of China, which, is totally misplaced for this part since the people just have nothing in common with the Chinese and their history. The government treaths this minority as terrorists, and since 9/11 presure has just been increased. This ofcourse with approval from Washington.
Back to the first day however. We felt quite unwelcome ofcourse after our arrival, but this changed rapidly after we just walked around and checked out the different places. Kashgar is famous for its huge sunday market, but there is a bazaar which is open daily and we visited that one. They sell a lot of different cloth and carpets, as well as knives and other Arab style stuff. Ofcourse when we passed the different stands everybody started shouting to try to sell their goods, but we didn't buy anything that day. We walked back after this to our hotel and had dinner at John's cafe again. After that we went back to the travel agency in the lobby to discuss the trip and quickly decided to do a three day camel trip through the desert. We discussed the details and bargained a bit untill we had a satisfaying price. We pinned the starting day on monday so we still have some days to do different stuff. We wanted to go to Karakul lake the next day and mentioned this to him. He then said that he had a van going there to pick up a tourgroup and we could catch a ride with the van for the same price as the public bus. This sounded really good to us and saved us the trouble for finding out where to catch the bus. We paid the deposit for the camel trip and asked if he could inquire for us what the train schedule is to Shanghai on the 20th, the day we want to leave. He agreed to do this for us and so the day ended good for us after a weird start...

Another thing that's a bit odd about this place is that they work with different times. First there is Beijing time, where the whole country should oblige to, and secondly there is local time, since Beijing time and the sun cycle don't much. Local time is two hours behind Beijing time. We decided to just skip the whole jetlag and just live on Beijing time. We also found out this has a lot of advantages for us. We agreed the driver would pick us up at 8 am local time. Thus, this is 10 am Beijing time, two more hours of sleep for us! After we set off that morning we first had to pick up a tour guide which was taking care of the group. This guy spoke good English and was fun to talk to. The total trip was a 5 hour drive and on the way the driver picked up three Israelies and their bikes, so the van was full. They countryside we passed through was full with mountains but completely different then the ones in Yunnan. The area looked very rough and rocky and no plants or trees grew there. It looked as though Osama Bin Laden himself could hide here. This part of China is also really close to Pakistan (the van was actually going there after dropping us off), and my view from Pakistan sort off looked as this landscape. On the way there was also a checkpoint where we had to show our passports. I have no idea why they have one there, but anyway, it just took 20 minutes and we could continue. We arrived at the lake at around 2.30pm Beijing time (12.30 local) where we found out we really underestimated the place. Nobody told us (even the Lonely Planet didn't mention this) that the lake was at a 3.600 meter hight and therefore cold. The wind started blowing and it started raining soon after we arrived and it felt as though we would freeze there. After a while it all got better and the sun started shining so it all got a bit better. We had lunch there and checked in into our accommodation. As the pictures in my webalbum show, we didn't have a hotel room but a 'Yurz' to our disposal. This is a sort of hut were the locals live in, and they built some for hiring out. The yurz was completely empty and instead of beds there were some blankets/matrasses and pillows we had to use. Surprisingly enough, after piling up enough of those it became really comfortable and this way of sleeping seriously can competer with regular bed. That day we decided to jsut hang around our yurz because the clouds looked quite treathening. It wouldn't be a good idea to circumnavigate the lake that day. We just passed the time with taking pictures, playing some mariokart on my nintendo ds and pee at weird places in the nature (we had no choice). At one point the guy who rents out the yurz (I don't know the plural for this word) asked us if we would want to have dinner at his place and asked how much shish kebabs we wanted, 5 or 10? We quickly said 10, because well, we wanted 10. Not really knowing of what we asked 10 pieces from we wondered what we could expect. Arriving at his place we noticed we were the only ones there. His wife gave us first a bowl of thick noodles with all kinds of stuff mixed in. This was really tasteful, although Jamie didn't really think so. After that the kebabs came and they were basically (really good) meatsticks, sort of like the ones I had in Shanghai before. And... we had 10 each! A bit too much perhaps, but because they were so good we just ate them. After dinner we went back, it started to get dark and we decided to have a beer before heading back. We asked a woman where we could get beers, and she directed her to her own tent where her husband(??) asked us to come in and sit down. And there we sat again, with a family, having beers this time. The tent looked really basic, but very practical, so that it seemed bigger than that it actually was. We found out that these people, and probably all of them that lived in the village, go to Kashgar on sunday to buy goods at the market, and then live on it for the week. Quite something different than what we are used too. After the beers it was already dark and especially windy and therefore freezing cold and we quickly got back to our yurz. We played some more mario kart and went to sleep afterwards.

We woke up the next day at 8.30 Beijing time and started to walk around the lake. It started well, but after about an hour and a half we ran into a swampy area which was very wet and we good only continue by taking our shoes off and wade through the various small creeks. The water was very cold and I was all too happy when I finally could put my shoes on. It took us a while to found out the best way to reach the high part again, but finally we made it. We walked to last bit on a fast pace since we saw dark clouds approaching. Eventually we came back to our camp (3.5 hours after departure) only just before it stated raining. The idea was to wait for the tour guide from previous day to discuss if the driver could take us to the sand dunes we saw on the way the day before and looked really appealing. We met him at around 12 am local time and started discussing a price. It was too high for us and another car was about to take off and offered a lower price. The big idea was to rent a yurz that place, walk around a bit and go back to Kashgar the next day. When we came to the dunes, they looked impressive, but not so that we wanted to stay the rest of the day. We decided to just go back to Kashgar the same day. We took some pictures and headed back afterwards. We came back in Kashgar at 5.30 pm Beijing time and took a local bus (at 10 cents each) to our hotel. Arriving there we checked in again and reclaimed our luggage which we left behind there. We were quite hungry by then and decided to go for street food today. There was one street we saw before which sold various food on so we went there. We took different stuff and some drinks and headed back to the hotel to eat it. After that we went to go on the internet at John's where I am now...

The plan for the coming week is as following. Tomorrow we want to go south to various smaller villages which are appearantly still traditionally Arab and stay the night in one of them. We second day want to visit some old ruins that are left from the ancient silk roads in the desert before heading back to Kashgar. On Sunday we want to be here for the big market. On monday we are going to start with the camel trip which will last untill wednesday evening. On thursday we will stay in Kashgar to relax and probably visit the old town part. Finally on friday we will leave for Shanghai on a three day train ride, back to (real) China...

Thank you, bye bye!

Lijiang back to Dali, to Urumqi and onto Kashgar!... but no Tibet (China trip part IV)

I am at a place now that I never thought I would come on this trip. Two days ago, our whole plans basically got messed up when I received a phone call that getting a permit for Tibet became very hard and it would take another month to settle it. We don't have the time, so the whole Tibet trip was suddenly off the table. We received our money back in Lijiang. This is a big bummer for us. To avoid depression we decided we wanted to do something really cool to make up for the gap that left the cancellation. We were looking at possibilities of going to Myanmar instead or to the north to the Xinjiang province. This is probably one of the least visited province by tourists, and going there is supposed to be like entering another country. Upon arrival here in Urumqi we noticed this. People look way different, all is in both Chinese and Arab, signs and stuff. It's way more like central Asia instead of the far east which comes to mind when thinking of China. It's quite weird being here, since we didn't plan it at all. Since my last post much happened...

The day after my last post (China trip part III) we set of for the imfamous Tiger Leaping Gorge. Although many travel agencies in Lijiang advertise for tours, we found some books at the Prague Cafe which had experiences of other people written down. It said that it's best (and cheapest) to just take the bus and go to a place called Qiaotou which marks the starting point for the hike. The hike can be down by two ways, the low and the high trail. The low trail is a paved road that leads just next to the Yangtze river, that flows between the two mountains. The high trail is higher up the mountain and has the better viewspots, but is also harder and a bit more dangerous than the low one. On that day we did just that. We took the bus at 8.30 am (we thought 7.30 at first so we were an hour early!) and headed for Qiaotou. Arriving there 3 hours later we got off just in front of a bar run by a woman named Margo. She gave us some information about the trail and because we didn't eat anything yet we asked her which the next point on the trail was to eat something. She told us this was only 2 hours later, so we went to a supermarked to by some simple stuff like cookies and crisps. We than started to walk. About 5 minutes, and basically just behind the corner, we came to a guesthouse run by Jane (so cleverly called Janes' guesthouse). Somewhere we read that Jane's often stoned, so we wondered if she was this time. Well, let's just say she might have been... It was strange to find it anyway since Margot told us there wouldn't be any place to eat. Jane was very nice but nobody was there at all, so from that point on we didn't like Margot. In the bus to Qiaotou we were joined by a bit annoying group of Americans, which made pour jokes and kept us from sleeping in that same bus. We found out later that they actually were walking with Margot herself (it didn't really surprise us) so probably booked a tour with her around the Gorge. Appart from all this disliking, the hike itself was absolutely amazing. It's hard to discribe the view (I posted some pictures by now so check them out!) if you haven't been there and witnessed it yourself. The trail started somewhat cheap and we found out that all the squash we played in Macau didn't really paid off as much as we wanted. We had a map with us which showed us that near the end of the first days hike, there would be a '28 bends' part that would lead us over a mountain and would top at around 2600 meter. At some point along the hike I thought we already arrived at the section, since we came across some bends and we had to climb already, but no, the hard part was yet to come. The bends reminded me a bit of climbing Mt. Kinabalu back in Malaysia, since it was as steap and also revealed my great *cough* physical condition I'm in. How happy I was when I could finally go downhill. The downhill part was also quite tricky but eventually after four hours we arrived at the Teahorse guesthouse which marked our stop for the first day. We were actually first appart from two Scottisch, but they weren't on our bus, so they don't count! We had a room for 1.50 each, and were able to wash our clothes there. That evening we sat around with the Scottisch and some French people. The next day we left last of everybody for the second part of the hike. For most people, this would be also be the last day, but we already decided we want to do an extra day and walk towards Daju, which is another 4 hours from the end of the Gorge.

The second day was much easier than the first one since there weren't any steap climbs. The trail was a good walk and the views just remained astonishing. For a mountain lover like me this was really fantastic. We came across a waterfall as well, which basically ran over the path and had to go 'through' it. (again, check the pictures!). In the end we had to climb down quite steaply to reach the point where the high and low trail come together again. This was at Tina's guesthouse. However we wanted to reach Sean's guesthouse to spend the night there. From Tina it was another 3 km to Sean's we found out. This was a easy part since it was a paved road and flat, so it was nice to walk. We reached Sean's at around 3 pm and sat down to decide what's next. It was still early and it isn't dark untill 8.30 pm so we played with the thought of just going all the way to Daju, spend the night there and take the morning bus back to Lijiang. We came across Margot again and ask about the possibility to do this. She said it was possible. We had to cross the river first to reach Daju, and Margot assured us we could catch the ferry and sleep at the other side. So we decided to chill out at Sean's, have a drink and lunch and start walking at 4 pm again. And so we did. We had the map and saw on it we had to follow a certain trail to reach the ferry. We walked for almost two hours when we came at a guesthouse where we drank something, before going further. The road was at first straight and than made a bend to the left. Just after the bend (according to the map) we had to take a smaller road off the main road which would lead us straight to the ferry. A road looking like this was there and I was convinced we had to take it. However on the main road red arrows were pointed a different direction towards the ferry. I was confused, but ofcourse we followed them at first, I guess the map would be wrong. I played with the tought that one funny Chinese put the arrows there. At the end of the road the arrows pointed to a guesthouse where a man who didn't speak English at all told us the ferry was closed and we should stay at his guesthouse. I immediately thought he put the arrows there so that people like us would end up at his place. I was also convinced that the ferry was still open since Margot assured us we could catch it easily. We were at the guys place at 6.30 pm and he said the ferry was closed at 6 pm. I didn't believe him at all and after he didn't give us information on how to get to the ferry and went furious, and basically told him to fuck off. I now thought that we did had to follow the map and had to take the road we saw earlier. At that point it made perfect sense to me. We went back down and Jamie couldn't do much but follow. When we entered the road, multiple people were warning us we shouldn't go that way, but stuborn as I was I did it anyway. Eventually I found out the path didn't lead us anywhere we decided to head back to the guesthouse to stay the night there and search for the ferry the next morning. I was still angry and the man at the other guesthouse, for misleading us with his arrows. We were dead tired when we came back and I soon found out the ferry actually did close at 6 pm. I basically came to me that Margot misinformed us and that the guy was only trying to help. I felt really guilty for what I did and Jamie wrote an apology in Chinese and we decided to go back the next morning, and give him the letter together with some Dutch clogs, we are giving out to people who are friendly and help us as a thank you. The next morning we set off at 9 am to find he wasn't there. A woman however accepted the letter and gave us something to drink. I guess it was his wife. After that we paid her for the drinks and she offered to show us the way to the ferry. She brought us to the good direction. For this I gave her some cash. We went further down the road, but the road became less and less clear. Eventually it became a very steap road down which ended up at the river bank near where the ferry would pick us up. The ferry brought us to the other side (seeing the river from this point was also amazing, it makes you feel really tiny) where had to climb up the cliff as steap as we had to climb down previously. I was very sweaty when reaching the top. There was a guesthouse there and we asked whether we could take the bus somewhere. To our surprise the lady told us there wasn't any bus going today! Great, now what. We decided to walk to the nearest village where another guesthouse was. Some other hikers where there already and they said we should talk to the owner and see if he could do anything. He said he had a minivan and would bring us back to Lijiang for 24 euros in total, so 12 each. This was quite a lot and he recommended us to wait if more people would show up to share the costs. We had to get back to Lijiang that day since we at that point still were unsure about when we would go to Tibet (if only we knew...). We already accepted we had to pay the money when to people showed up. One French and one American. I explained the situation to them and we agreed to share the costs. We actually managed to bargain down to 20 euros, so 5 each. None of us were really convinced that there truly wasn't any buses going to Lijiang that day, so we asked him if he could bring us to Daju to the bus station so we could look ourselves. So he did and there he quickly started talking to the people from the ticket office, and yes, the told us there was no bus going. This looking really suspicious but there was nothing we could do but accept the 20 euro and he brought us back. We arrived back in Lijiang at 3 pm. We went back to our first hostel to collect our backpacks (we only took a small bag each for the hike) and see if they still would have a room for us. They didn't so we found another one. It was good to have a shower there since we both smelled really bad after all that happened. I then called David (our contact in Lijiang for the Tibet trip) to find out when we could leave. He then said they had some problems and it could be delayed a few days...

That evening we slowly started to think about alternatives if the delay would actually be longer than the 10th of July, the last day we pinned down as a possibility to leave. We thought of going to Myanmar or the desert in the north. A well, first we had to know for sure we couldn't go, we still had high hopes at that point. The next we planned as a do-nothing day and we just had slept long and had breakfast and strolled around a bit. Getting a bit bored, I called David again to see how things are and if he had any tips on what to do in the neighbourhood. However, he told me about the extra month before. The rest I basically mentioned in the introduction. We got our deposit back and ran off to an internet cafe to see that we could do instead. We found our Myanmar would be difficult, but found a flight from Kunming to Urumqi that would cost us 150 euros. We now have saved some money from the Tibet trip so we could afford it. We went to a travel agency and booked a bus for the next day to Kunming. We also booked a flight for the day after to Urumqi the day after (the 9th of July). We were happy we did this, it was quite impulsive, but we needed it after the Tibet deception. That eveving we didn't do much. We went to some bars to watch Chinese dance (they dance really stupid, which was quite entertaining for us). At one point we were also forced to dance with them. It wasn't that much fun but they thought it was a great thing to happen that evening... ah well...

The next day we woke up early to catch the 8.30 am bus to Kunming. It took 9 hours in total to arrive, which we did around 5.30 pm the same day. We took a taxi to a hostel recommended by lonely planet and after dropping our backpacks we went off to a bookstore to buy some more books. I bought the third Harry Potter (by then I already finished the first one and was well into the second) and Jamie bought the Davinci Code. We then ate something at a pizzeria (very good pizza this time) and went back to hostel. We read something and went to sleep. The next morning (this morning actually) we woke up at around 8.30 to catch a taxi around 9 to the airport. We had the flight at 10.30 am. The flight took us in total 6 hours since it also made a stopover at Xian. We reached Urumqi by 5.30 pm and took a taxi straight to the train station. The station was filled with people. It was really chaotic. Right when it was our turn to purchase tickets to Kashgar (we wanted to go the next day as early as possible) they closed the counter! I couldn't believe it! We had to go back into another line. We had been waiting for a while already and no way I wanted to go all the way to the back of another line. One problem though, no-one spoke English what so ever. I was quite mad and Jamie went back to another line to secure our spot anyway. I tried to explain to the guards there that I was already standing in front of another line and I think eventually they understood what I ment, because I could go in front of another line. One Chinese that could speak a bit of English came to my aid and explained the guard that I wanted to purchase two tickets to Kashgar. However I found out all trains are full for the next two days. Disapointed I went back to Jamie and told her the bad news. We decided to check out how much a flight would be. At the China Southern Airlines companies office we found out the flight would only be 17 euros more then the train at 50 euros in total. We could also take one at 8.55 the next morning and we decided to do this instantly. And now I am here, in an hostel typing this story. We will leave for Kashgar tomorrow morning. I am quite tired now and will finish here...

thank you, bye bye!

Pictures!

Finally! I found a place which allows me to upload photos. I just finished updating them and updated the Lijiang, Dali, Kunming and Guilin (which actually wasn't in Guilin itself, as you should know!). I came back today from the three-day hike along the Tiger Leaping Gorge. It was very tiring, but it was also absolutely amazing! I am quite tired now and it took me a while to upload all the pictures, so I'll post the complete story maybe in a few days time. Check out the pictures from the hike if you like. They are stored under the Lijiang section. All photos can be viewed when clicking photo album at the link section of this page. Enjoy!

Still in Lijiang (China trip part III)

Still in Lijiang and it's now three days later (or is it four?). I am sort of losing track of time on this trip and just found out today that it's actually tuesday. The last three days been really cool. The first day after arrival (so since my last post), we basically didn't do much. We just strolled around the city to see what it's all about. It's a very nice looking city and lookes especially great at night. However it is very touristy although you won't find that much westeners. Most of the tourists are Chinese Han people, ofcourse joined together in various groups with their tourguides holding up the flags up front. It quite a funny site and the Chinese really don't understand they look like sheep.

As I said the first day we didn't do much but walk around. The city is full of (actually there are nothing but) souvenir shops and bars. We basically explored them and made reservations to have dinner at 'monkey bar' which has a refference in the Lonely Planet. The idea is to eat with a family and pay 15 RMB (1.50 in euros). What you get for dinner is whatever there is on the market that day. That evening we got there at 6.30 pm to start the dinner. We met a American couple, wel a guy from Atlanta who is married to a woman from Kashmir. It was quite an interesting conversation that ofcourse ended up being quite policital. It's kinda hard not to mention Bush at some point... The host itself was very silent so we didn't get much out of him. The food however was really delicious, and cheap, so it was certainly something to do while being here. That evening we checked out some bars to find drunken Chinese. From previous experience we know that this type of Chinese are of the funiest kind, and on itself a guarantee for a good evening. We found them in some bars but not all, so the evening was so-so.
The next day we went cycling again. First we went to the Black Dragon Pool park which has some beautiful Chinese architecture. It's famous for both that and it's pool (hence the name). However the pool was almost dried up, so it left a muddy residue. It wasn't even half as nice as the pictures ofcourse but there was plenty other stuff to make up for it. One of those things was the Dongba Research Institute that tries to keep the local ancient Dongba culture alive, through means of giving classes and teaching people the rituals of the culture such as the writing language which is unique from any other. We got a small lecture from one of the students, which revealed to us that there are nowadays only 20 Dongba people left, eight of which are connected to the institute. After the whole park thing we went on our way to a local village which is called Baisha. It was recommended by Lonely Planet as well. We are now starting to find out, however, that most things that are recommended in LP are either full of tourists, or have seen large amounts of tourists in the past so that it is now not full of them anymore, but filled with shops selling all the same stuff. As I mentioned before, Chinese are quite blinded by money and if one concept (or shop for that matter) proves that it appeals to tourists, they don't think much but copy it right away. This can spoil cities, Lijiang still has its old town appeal, but Baisha is just a simple village that basically ruined itself with it shops that by the looks of it don't make much money. By the time we reached the city heavy rain poored down so we were stuck there for 2.5 hours. After that my bike broke down so I had to go back to get it fixed. We reached Lijiang at around 7.30 pm. We took it easy that day and I finish my book, to finally start with Harry Potter. I wanna see where all the fuzz is about. I've seen the first movie, which didn't impress me, but I must say that the book's off to a good start. We'll see...

The third day, so today, we had breakfast at the 'Prague Cafe' where we were approached by a woman offering a one day tour around the neighbourhood, promising no other tourists and secluded placed where no other tour would bring us. In that same cafe there are books to be found where other peoples experiences are bundled and we read before that these tours from the woman that approached us, are in fact quite famous and bring the experience they promise. So we decided to do that. Around 10 we set off and by minibus we first travelled to... well I don't know... somewhere. The area showed us small Naxi villages (the type of people in this region of the Yunnan province or from the Naxi kind and there architecture bear a lot of similarities, hence, all villages basically look more or less the same) and lot of farmland that is mostly used for growing potatoes, we learned. Eventually we reached a certain village and went out of the minivan to have a small walk around the area. Soon we reached a small lake where a few men where fishing and the guide suggested to buy some fish and go to a Naxi families house to either bbq, fry or boil it. Ofcourse I voted for bbq, since I haven't had a good one for ages. we had 3.5 kilos of freshly cought fish (it was still alive, even after the removal of its insights and thrown on the bbq) that costed us 30 RMB, 3 euros! The house we went to was like a prehistorical house with no electricity and everything in one room. Although primitive, all things were cleverly placed and the way they make food is maybe the best way. Basically everything is barbeque, or cooked over a fire which was in the middle of the room. It is quite hard to explain this, so I made some pictures to illustrate this. Same story, uploading them hasn't worked yet, but I'll make an attempt after finishing this story. Besides the bbq we also had some rice and baked vegatables mixed with pieces of ham. The lunch(!) was really good and filling. After an hour or two we left again. It was now already 4 pm. We headed for some more villages, where we were around 5.30 pm till 7 pm, and noticed that that was the time most farmers quite there work to play either mayong (men) or some card game (woman). We stood watching a card game by old woman for about 10 minutes. The old woman where really hilarious (to see a movie of this visit Jamies website jamieroundtheworld.com). We were told that the woman where at least 80 years of age. Although they looked very old by appearance, the were behaving very 'young'. Appearantly people in these villages reach a very high age, I really wonder what their secret is. I assume this is mainly because a healthy lifestyle (not being in contact with alcohol or other 'unhealthy' stuff) and a lot of physical excersize, in the form of labour on the lands. They all still work hard everyday. By this time I really had to think at what 80+ people do in western countries, such as the Netherlands... hmm.
We came back to Lijiang this evening around 7 pm and ate at KFC (for shame, I know) The plans are to go hiking for three days starting tomorrow at the infamous Tiger Leaping Gorge, which according to many (reliable) sources should be amazing. We also found out that we will be accompanied by to men at our trip to tibet, which will be shortly after we come back to Lijiang. This basically ends my story here. I will probably go online one time before going to Tibet to update on the hike and perhaps update some pictures.

For now, thank you, bye bye!

Dali - Lijiang - and upcoming: Tibet! (China trip part II)

A small update from Lijiang. We arrived here just a few hours ago and basically went straight for an internet cafe. Today we finally booked our trip to Tibet!... and yes, we are very psyched. Since many people told us that booking a trip to tibet would either be very expensive, fully booked, or just almost impossible for foreigners at all due to new regulations, we didn't have too high hopes of getting there. However, in Dali we found our saviour with the name Jack!

Th story goes like this; We arrived in Dali at the 29th of June in the early morning. We had taken a overnight train from Kunming the night before. After arrival we walked around to find a hostel and found one with the name Tibetan lodge (or something). Dali is a very nice looking town, located near a big lake with mountains in de backdrop. When most would think of China, architecture like in Dali would probably come to mind. That morning we had breakfast and walked around to see what's offered. We found one place that offered horse riding tours through the mountains. So we decided to take one of them. One hour later we were taken to the horses and the trip started. And what a trip it was! I have never rode a horse before and it was a cool experience. The trip was really beautiful since the area hosts some nice scenery. Since we were on horses we came at places where no other tourist could be seen, to eventually reach some spots that are selected for tourists to visit. This was nice as well, but the horse trip made the biggest impression for sure! I was impressed by the horses I must say since the climb was real steap and for them to take us down must have been quite a task. But we made it back. The trip in total lasted for around 5 hours. A recommendation for sure!

That evening we had dinner and strolled around the city. In the back of our minds we wanted to find a way to get to Tibet overland. We found a few offers but all were either too expensive or the program didn't really appeal to us. By accident we found a small travel agency and decided to ask there. The guy, who hardly spoke english, presented us one option of a 10 day tour for 500 euros each. This sounded reasonable so we asked about the program. He then called his mate who spoke better English and we tried to get our questions across by means of the phone. Because this was a bit difficult he said we should come over to his office, which suprisingly we overlooked the first time we passed there. The guys name was Jack and he ended up being our hero of the day. His English was still not that great but enough to get the idea across. Because he only had a paper with the program in Chinese he tried to translate it for us. I got the basics and asked if we could take the paper with us. We then proceeded to the restaurant where we ate some hours before. One of the waiters spoke good English and we asked him if he could translate the program for us, while I was making notes. Thanks to him we got a good idea of what the program is. From one other guy we heard in the morning that the road was broken, so we didn't want to book the tour before that was cross checked. The next morning we heard that the road's fine and we decided to go and book the tour. Back at Jack's it took a while because we already booked a mini bus to Lijiang for the same evening. His brother has a office there and he had to make a few phone calls so that it could be settled that we will start the tour from there. After overcoming some minor issues we paid the deposit and went off. We bought the lonely planet of tibet, and rented a bike to make a trip to a little place some 20 km outside Dali. It was a nice day for a bike ride and the scenery was again not one of the worse I've ever seen.

Back at Dali we had dinner again and went to the place where we booked the mini bus. We had to wait for half an hour or so before it came and made our way to Lijiang. Upon our departure, Jack made another appearance, because he had to note down the number of the bus. His brother and a English speaking fellow would await us that evening to guide us to the hostel area and discuss the details about the trip. Jack sure put a lot of effort in it, and made sure that everything was taken care of. He gave us his number in case anything would go wrong. If we would decide not to do it, or something would be troublesome, we could always get our deposit back. This assured us that this was a good deal, and by now we really can't wait to get our asses in the jeep on the way to Tibet!

Right now I am at Lijiang as I mentioned and we will see if we can get a hiking trip across the local mountain area for a couple of days. A lot of travel agencies offer that kind of trip over here and people say it's well worth it, so that is definately a good way to pass the time untill our permits for Tibet are taken care off. Again I was not able to post pictures to illustrate the stories. The old city of Lijiang looks like a fairy tale city at night, I will definately try to make some good nighttime pictures here. Haven't seen it by day yet, but my guess is that it is equally impressive as well. A good place to have a little break from travelling around all the time. I will end this update here since I'm quite tired from everything that happened today. I will try to post within 5 days or so, after we did the hike and before I go to Tibet.

thank you, bye bye!

Guilin - Yangshuo - Xingping - Kunming and future plans (China trip part I)

Reporting from Kunming, Yunnan province right now. How it all started:
So we finally took off for the big China trip last monday. We were planning to apply for the Russian visa but we find out it would take us another two days in Hong Kong. We will now apply for it in Shanghai in July. I was supposed to meet Jamie at the ferry terminal in Kowloon. Ofcourse there was a communication problem we ended up at two different terminals! Off to a bad start. A couple of hourse later we met and went straight for Shenzhen to take the train to Guilin. The train would leave at around 6 pm and we were wondering if we even could have tickets since we were in Shenzhen around 4 pm. Chinese people like to exagarate because we heard from different people that it would be very difficult to get train tickets in de high season. We found out it was actually quite easy and we had train tickets (hard sleepers) straight away. We then had dinner and headed back to the train station to catch the train. I've never been in a Chinese sleeper train before so I wondered what to expect. They are really clean and the beds, altough hard sleepers, where comfortable enough to have a good nights rest.

The next day we arrived in Guilin at 7.42 am (according to Jamie's well kept notes) and after inspecting the lonely planet we decided not to stay there. After buying tickets for Kunming for the next days evening, we took the bus straight to Yangshuo, a smaller place and more a laid-back backpackers resort, than the busy (and to be honoust, really ugly by the looks of it) Guilin. We arrived there around eleven and checked into a hostel straight after arrival. The hostel costed only 2.50 (euros) per person and that's for a double room! Viva la China!
After that we took the bus to Xingping were we took a boat tour along the Li river, which boasted some incredible scenery. The tour lasted for almost one and a half hours and we took plenty of pictures (as soon as I have a chance I will try to upload them to the photo album). The dock for the boats was a bit outside of the city and we decided to walk back because we had some time to kill. Bad choice on our side, because of 15 minutes walking it started to rain. It was really a tropical sudden rain and in no time we were completely soaked. After the rain cleared we walked further but our clothes never really gotten dry again. We had lunch in Xingping again and headed back to Yangshuo. Back at base I was happy to take a shower and change to dry clothes and take a nap. Appearantly I slept for 2 hours and there was no way for Jamie to wake me up. Appearantly she tried various methods, including holding a ringing alarm next to my ear, but with no result. So now I'm very proud of my napping abilities, and I'm willing to share my secret (mail me for current rates!). That evening we had dinner at a street restaurant, which was quite ok, but I was still not that hungry after the nap. We walked around a little bit more but it started to rain again, so we headed back for the hostel. Jamie fell straight a sleep and I read for an hour or so before sleeping. This marked the end of day 2 of our trip!

The next morning we woke up early because we wanted to make a bike trip through the surroundings of Yangshuo and eventually go to a local mountain called the moon hill, but of course we ended up taking the wrong road. To make to best out of bad situation we wanted to bike back along the river, and therefore we had to find a bridge to cross it. This seemed easier then that it was and we needed some locals help to find it. Arriving at the bridge we found it's under reconstruction but we were offered a temporary ferry-ish service which would costs us 10 yuan. Of course they tricked us because none of the locals paid for it. Bastards! Ok, I guess we are easy targets but still...

So after reaching the other shore we headed in the direction of Yangshuo again but eventually got stuck because the road was inaccessible and we could continue. I must say that where we got stuck the scenery was absolutely stunning, even better than what we saw during the boat trip the day before. Although I'm so far talking about mountains all the time, it's not really doing them justice. They are more very steep rocks emerging from the ground, perhaps not even high enough to be mountains. I guess pictures will explain it better, and I advice using google to find out more, but if not, wait for the pictures, since I have plenty.

Well, anyway, we had to head back for the ferry and take the same road back. This time we didn't pay anything, and nobody was complaining, so another problem solved. We got back in time prepared for going back to Guilin that afternoon. We had lunch at a local Chinese place and at for 30 cents, 15 cents each! We than ordered some more food for take away so we would have something to eat at the train (which costed us another 60 cents, oh boy!). We took the bus at 2.30 pm that day and headed back to Guilin. We had a train waiting at 16.50 pm that took us to Kunming.

In the train Jamie found out that her money was taken from her wallet, 260 euros! Of course this came quite as a shock and we are still figuring out when it happened. Two hours before she paid in a supermarket and now it was all gone. Probably in the bus back to Guilin when we both were sleeping. At that point every Chinese that would anoy us shouldn't come too close because we were seriously pissed off. Nothing we could do about it and the next day (today) we just went on with our planning.

Arriving at Kunming we bought train tickets to Dali for this evening. The train will leave at 10.14 pm and thats one and a half hours away from now. Today we went to a local minorities museum first, which was really interesting. After that we went to an English bookstore where I bought three books (harry potter I & II and 'fear and loathing in Las Vegas'). After that we walked to temple which was probably the most impressive temple I've seen so far. It was quite big and the buddhist monks were holding a ceremonie at the time. Something I would recommend to anyone. After the temple we walked to a local travel agency to inform about possibilities of getting to tibet, but the agency closed 5 minutes before we arrived (it was an hours walk). I have the number now and will try to call to call them tomorrow and see if we could settle something. Right now I'm sitting in a restaurant where we just had pizza (yes, we did!). The plans are to stay a few days in Dali before heading for Lijiang in northwest Yunnan and see if we can do a hiking tour from there. Appearantly, the scenery is beautiful there. In Dali we will try to get us permits for Tibet and a overland tour to Lhasa which would take eight days. It seems to be really expensive so we want to share it with other people. I heard there are always other backpackers that want to do something similar, and perhaps it's possible to share the costs, which would make this option quite feasible. More on that later of course. For now I'm off to catch the train to Dali, where we have a few days to relax. Perhaps I can upload some pictures there, we'll see...

Thank you, bye bye!