Dan's Den

One year to date (minus five days)

2009-07-06T01:42:00.002+02:00

So after one year of absence (5 days short of a year actually!) I’ve decided to become active again on this blog. Since my three die hard readers have asked for further writing (probably to be polite, but still, thanks you guys!) I’ve decided to write a little story.

There are a number of reasons why I’m writing this now. First of all, I find this period in my life worthy of writing about. In my case this basically means that I find this part worthy of remembering, since I’m more and more finding out that I use this blog for remembering past events. My parents often asked me why I didn’t write much while I was in New Zealand. This is basically due to the fact that I don’t necessarily want to remember everything in detail about that period, in comparison to for instance the vodka train trip, which I still reminisce about every now and then. Seriously, if there is one thing I would recommend to everybody is to do a (primitive-ish) train trip through a country or area that is far away from your comfort zone. I can really go on forever about the trip and why one should do this and even though I would happily do so, that works better on request.

The second reason is that in my opinion things like facebook status-updates or ‘tweets’ just don’t cut it. Even though I get why they are so popular (and yes I do have a facebook and twitter account), they are called mini-blogs for a reason. Agreed, they can be useful new media tools, but for me it is hard to comprehend that a person like Lance Armstrong avoids press conferences but in the meantime ‘announces’ the purchase of a new pair of socks. For me this falls under the ‘WGAS’ category (again, explanation on request). So instead of posting ‘Daniel thinks his experience in Croatia so far beats NZ’ I decided to again post here.

Anyways, as I mentioned, I now live and work (and unfortunately am still studying) in Dubrovnik, Croatia. I started working for Elite Travel last month and so far I’m not regretting moving here. Even though payment is only a fraction of what I could earn back home, there are many reasons for doing what I do. First of all I noticed that a year is pretty much the maximum I can cope with being in the Netherlands without being too annoyed about people. This sounds majorly pessimistic and of course it is just that. However, that is all I will say about it since I did exactly what people over there would tell/ask me when they would have known about my little annoyances (question being; ‘well, why don’t you kindly f*ck off then?’). Obviously this is also not the main reason for going to Croatia. I don’t get to choose my dream job and I first need an opportunity, which I got here (which I am grateful for, given the recession and the fact that all people around me are losing jobs instead of gaining). For me, the timing seemed perfect. I am about to graduate and I am not sure about if, where and which master degree I want to do, plus I can practice my Croatian language skills (or better; lack of them). Hmm, it just crossed my mind that it would be a good test for me to write a blog post in Croatian around this time next year… Will be interesting to see if I’ll manage…

This doesn’t (necessarily) mean that I won’t post back here fore another year, but for now I will leave it at this. I just read back what I’ve just written and I realize that (again) it is not that interesting for other readers but myself. However I’m confident that after a certain period of time posts like this will be a good read for me personally. Let’s find out if I’m right about that…

From everything and some more!

2008-07-14T11:05:00.004+02:00

Basically I could start every update nowadays with explaining that I've busy and I've been too lazy to update the blog. So there you go. However much has happened during the passed two months and I'm looking at my last 16 days in New Zealand. I have now finished my internship too and although I still have to spend time finishing a few reports, it is a good feeling. Winter has set in in this part of the world and where most people I know are walking in shirts and shorts I am snowboarding as much as I can. The last time I updated the website when I came back from doubtful sound which was I believe in May, just after my parents left. Best to pick up from then...

I haven't described the Doubtful Sound trip yet but since it's a while back already I'll keep it short. The trip was basically another famil (read freeloaders paradise) for front-office staff. It was a two day trip where we would overnight on a boat in the actual fjord. So we set of at 7 in the morning for a bus trip to the small town of Manapouri where we were loaded on a ferry that would take us to the other side of the lake. This is the only way to get to Doubtful since there is no road connecting it with either Manapouri or Te Anau. The ferry took us to the other side of Lake Manapouri where the famous Manapouri power plant is located. This used to be a prestigious power project that is now in full use (well, has been for quite a few years now). Visiting the plant is part of some trips but wasn't of ours. We were picked up by another coach that would take us towards to boat which was only 40 minutes away. On the boat we were assigned to our dorms and mixed with the paying folks (aka mortals). The rest of the day was pretty eventful too with sea kayaking (and close encounters with dolphins, pretty neat!) swimming in neat freezing water and an all you can eat buffet, still free for us. On top of that there was an open bar which closed at 10 pm (a couple of hours to early). The next day compromised of the trip back with buffet breakfast on the way, two minutes of absolutely nothing (everyone had to shut up and engines were shut off to give the best version of silence I had ever heard, or not heard of course). The rest of the day was the first days trip in reverse so not much to add there.

After this pretty unique trip all went back to normal with work getting boring and slow (off season) and the weather turned nasty. Nothing major happened until I was invited (read: constantly spamming their email from my side) by A.J. Hackett to be part of a bungy famil day. All you 3 die-hard readers of this blog will know that after doing the highest one in Macau I developed a new favorite adrenaline rush which is bungy jumping. I have now done a skydive as well but I still prefer bungy over it (by a long shot!). During this day front line staff across Queenstown is given the chance to do all three jumps in one day. I think I can make a long story short by just showing ze footage:

The first jump of the day was the Kawarau Bridge jump which is the oldest in Queenstown and I believe in the world as well. It's 43 meters high.

Next was the Nevis Highwire Bungy which clocks in at 134 meters, still about 90 meters short of the one I did in Macau (muhaha).

Last but not least is the Ledge jump which is located at the top of the gondola. This jump is unique in the sense that you are only attached to your stomach which creates the chance to run off the platform. It's 47 meters (although 400 meters above Queenstown).

Not soon after the jumps I finished my internship at the Holiday Park (27th of June). Ever since I am passing my time with snowboarding, city trips and planning city trips. I just came back from Dunedin where I watched the All Blacks getting beat by South Africa. I went with Tobi and Nick (ze germans are here! shit!) and met up in Dunedin with Eefje and her boyfriend Laurens who joined us to the game. We were quite lucky to get tickets to the game since originally we would get them off a friend of a friend but two days before the match this all went wrong. The only tickets still available were part of a package where we got to hang out with the local rugby club and get free drinks and food. Not a bad deal. All transportation to and from the stadium was taken care of as well. The came was alright, not great, and New Zealand lost by 2 points which was a bit of an anti-climax. The atmosphere was amazing. It still surprises me that all supporters are mixed up in the stands. Nick was the only one supporting S-A and would surely get a beating if this would be a soccer match. You could say that rugby is more civilized...

Now I'm still recovering from the weekend and planning a trip around the South Island while I still can! This would also mark the third consecutive year where I will celebrate my birthday during a trip (sniff!), but that's all good. I'm quite excited about the whole thing and of course meeting Dave in Melbourne after that. Boy time sure went fast, even though it was all a bit less exciting then the whole China thing (comparing pears with apples I know).

Anywho, I will try to upgrade my blog after the upcoming trip. Oh, don't forget to check out the updated photo album!

Cheerio!

Doubtful Sound

2008-05-15T09:52:00.003+02:00

Just came back from Doubtful Sound, will write something about it soon, and upload some more pictures; but here is one to start with (Panorama shot of Lake Te Anau, composed of 14 seperate pictures)

New crib and new car

2008-03-19T07:06:00.001+01:00

I know I'm getting lazy and my apologies for that, but much has happened. Last time I was complaining about tuff that was happening at work and my living circumstances. The good news is that I finally moved from Arthurs Point and sharing a place in Marina Heights now with a Kiwi bloke. It's a real cool place with a big terrace and great view over the lake and the Remarkables. I've made a little movie to show this:

Right, now for the bad news. I almost killed myself driving downhill and crashing my car, quite randomly. It was the first rainy day in three weeks and roads where slippery. I went into a corner and took it too wide so tried to correct that and started slipping around. Of course I hit the brake (D'oh!) and hit a bump while shoving off the road. This launched me over a fence. After rolling five times I finally landed on my roof, with no injuries what so ever. It was like a movie scene. I'm happy I survived it but it costed me heaps of money. Besides losing the car I had to pay towing costs and had to take two driving lessons and pay for that. Eventually got everything taken care of and with the help of my parents I was able to buy a new car. Without that I wouldn't have been able to move out and all that so I'm very grateful for it (the new car can also be seen on the movie). For the rest of my time here, things are better at work but I'm stuck in a routine, as happens with a job, which kinda sucks. Not much to say about that so I just pass my days as normal as I can. I also bought a seasons ski pass so gonna do heaps of snowboarding in winter which I'm really looking forward to.

Till next time!

Ciao

A few weeks later...

2008-01-25T07:29:00.000+01:00

Yes it has indeed been a while since I updated my website. Reason for that is lack of time and lack of motivation. As a mentioned in my last post, New Zealand is a great country. However some things are going different then what I expected. I live very near the campsite where I work and however this convenient this may be, it's still a bit out of town. Adding this up with the total non-existence of a public transport system makes it hard to get around here and therefore I got quite bored at times. The thing with me is that when I get bored I lose all motivation to go and do something, which leads to more boredom, and so on. Right now I'm trying to escape from the downward spiral by moving to town and buying a car. None of which is successful so far but I'm sure eventually will be.

To make things short then, the last three weeks or see have mostly been quite similar to each other. Next week however the pre-season rugby training sessions are starting and I signed up for it. Hopefully I meet some more people there which I'm sure I will. The surroundings here are still stunning and every day I wake up I am amazed by the natural beauty of it. Now that it's high season most companies that offer activities don't take famils (offer activities free of charge for people that promote their activities such as yours truly), so I have to wait a bit before I can do bungyjumps, skydives and hang-gliding. However by now I've been rafting as well which was really cool. I was around 2 hours in the water on the shotover river which at times can be quite rough. I also been on the shotover jet which is cool as well, although I'm not as psyched about it as most people are. It's quite passive and although that sounds weird about a jetboat but you just have to sit there and that's it. Myself, I would rather be driving the thing... however they wouldn't let me... bastards.

The holiday park is getting a bit quieter now that new year is over. We still have heaps of Dutch people as guests and it's still fun to see their faces after they made a huge effort to speak English and I simply answer them in Dutch (it's not hard to recognize the Dutch I'm afraid). Because the park is mellowing down a bit I start to have more time for my school assignment which I found out will end up being a huge report. That's fine though since I have enough time on my hands to work on it.

So anyway... not much to add at this moment in time. I will continue to find a suitable car and place to live, which I hope will be successful sooner then later.

cheerio!

New Zealand!

2007-12-27T10:08:00.000+01:00

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)

2007-09-06T21:14:00.000+02:00

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)

2007-08-24T17:36:00.000+02:00

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)

2007-08-08T07:29:00.000+02:00

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)

2007-08-04T06:37:00.000+02:00

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)

2007-08-01T11:56:00.000+02:00

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)

2007-07-27T15:09:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-26T04:49:00.000+02:00

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)

2007-07-15T14:49:00.000+02:00

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)

2007-07-12T15:05:00.001+02:00

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)

2007-07-09T14:49:00.000+02:00

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!

2007-07-06T15:41:00.000+02:00

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)

2007-07-03T14:33:00.000+02:00

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)

2007-06-30T18:09:00.000+02:00

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)

2007-06-28T13:50:00.000+02:00

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!

So much Dutchies!

2007-06-22T11:35:00.000+02:00

This is now my fifth day in Hong Kong and I am liking it a lot. This is basically the last week I can take it easy before we embark on our trip trough China. This trip was originally due on next sunday (the 24th) but changes had to be made after we heard that the visa for Russia can only be applied for in Hong Kong and not in Beijing as we hoped and expected. This gives us a delay of one day since the local consulate will not be open on sunday and we have to wait till monday. That evening we will then go to Shenzhen to either take the train or bus to Guilin, so it means only a one day delay. Because we now don't have to apply for the visa in Beijing, we can arrive there one day later and basically nothing really changes. Since it's friday now, anticipation is growing. '

However, I am certainly not bored here in Hong Kong. Patrick and Bart are great guys and I am really apreciative that I can stay at their place and use their amenities. I have had a good time so far since there is a lot to do here. The first day, like I mentioned before I basically just slepth through, but in the evening we want to a bar called 'stick your finger'. There were two live bands playing and although the setlist wasn't that thrilling, Patrick assured me that normally they are more fun. However, since we were with a group of six we had enough fun and so the first day of my stay was a good one. The next day was a national holiday so basically the whole of Hong Kong were off from work. Patrick and Bart took me to Victoria's peak where a great view of the city can be enjoyed. Ofcourse it is one of the biggest tourist places of HK and it was full with them, it still was impressive to see the city like that. I tried to make a panorama picture there, so when I get I will try to stitch them together and see if I can post some good panoramas from that view as well as from the skyline.
After that we went to an area called 'Stanley' were dragonboat races were held. There we met up with Eva, Milou and there parents. I also got introduced to some of their friends and together we want to a Thai restaurant and had an excellent meal. Yes, the Dutch equipe is well presented here in HK! By that time Bart left the group to meet up with his girlfriend. After the meal we went to the appartment of Eva's parents to play some poker. Since it gotten late at one point and the metros weren't running anymore, they offered me a bed. This was really nice of them, especially since I was basically still on a 'jetlag' from the trainride from Shanghai. I slept like a log for almost 12 hours.

The next day (wednesday) I was supposed to meet Olli, Carl and Liam because they were leaving for England that evening. Unfortunately I couldn't reach them by phone, because of some stupid network problems, thus so much for that plan. Quite a pity though, since I probably won't see them in a while. I am sure that at one point we will meet up again in Europe. So instead of meeting them, I basically took the MTR to central station and wondered around there, just taking it easy and making some pictures. After that I took the same MTR to Mongkok where there is a big computer centre. I was looking for some replacement parts for my headphones, since I lost some on the way here. I couldn't find any in the end and went to a bookstore to buy the latest National Geographic Magazine.
Back home that evening I discovered that I didn't lose the earphone piece at all since it was just lying there on the table... weird...
The next day I basically stayed home all day to chill out and watch a movie (The Illusionist, real good) and surf on the internet a bit. That was quite nice after some hectic and busy days. That day was also the birthday of Ton (Eva and Milou's dad) and we were invited for dinner at their place. The dinner was excellent and we had a lot of fun that evening.
That night I had problems sleeping for some reason and although I wanted to go out today I decided to stay home to try to get a few hours sleep during the day. I needed this since today's Patrick's birthday and we are going to celebrate it at Lan Kwai Fong (look it up, you'll understand that I need to be in good shape for this). So today was quite boring but I'm sure the evening will have plenty of fun ahead to make up for this.

The plans for tomorrow is to be a bit active; I am planning to make some pictures of the skyline at day and nighttime and want to see some parts I haven't seen yet. Also, I promised to make the guys spaghetti, so I'll have to get on it that evening. On sunday we are planning a day at the beach at some place in the new territories where tourists don't come or something. We are now praying for some nice weather, but that should be okay since it have been good all week so far. Monday then eventually I meet up with Jamie again and will eventually set of for the mighty China, so chances are that my next post will be from some place there. I'll try my best to keep it updated, but I am not sure about my internet access posibilities, but I'll find out soon...

for now,

thank you, bye bye!

Shanghai, baby!

2007-06-20T16:23:00.000+02:00

I said it before and I'll say it again. The subway is a great invention. In every city I have been so far that had it, they all left me with a good impression. These aren't that many still, but you'll get the idea. I'm currently in Hong Kong and the MTR (the local name for the subway) is a great way of transport. The other cities where I used the subway are London and more recently Shanghai. And this little bedtime story is going to be about that city.

Well the philisophy behind is quite simple; Schools out, let's hit the road! We finished our exams last wednesday and flew to Shanghai on thursday. The sunday afwards we took the train back to Guangzhou which was a 21 hour ride. After that I took the bus to Hong Kong where Patrick awaited me. I will remain under his supervision untill next sunday (if everything goes according to plan) and meet up with Jamie to begin the trip around China.

So ok, back to last wednesday. We all finished our exans and had a dinner party at Jaime's place that evening. The people that weren't going to Shanghai were supposed to go to a karaoke bar afterwards where there was a fourth-years graduation party. This means they sort of hired the bar and if one would pay a 100 dollars (10 euros) one could drink as much as one would want to. And ofcourse the Shanghai crew eventually was convinced to join the crew and headed of for the bar anyway, completely ignoring the fact that we had to get up at 7 am the next morning. We ended up leaving the bar at around 4.30 am and yes, we overslept. I was the first to wake up to my roommates alarm at 8.40 am. That really scared the shit out of me, and I immediatly tried to call Olli who didn't pick up the phone...weird.... After that I called and he took up the phone sounding really tired. At first I thought he was making fun of me but soon found out that I just woken him up. Fortunately I could reach Olli after that call and he and Liam (Carl's brother that was staying at Olli's place). I guess this is what you get when the basic rules of nature are ignored. I couldn't even remember putting out my alarm clocks (yes more than one!). Well anyway, we knew we could still make it since the plane would leave at 11.30 am anyway.

So we all rushed to the border (the plane would leave from Zhuhai), and luckily we could get through quite easily. Eventually we reached the airport at around 10.45 am.

Basically just in time, however the plane was an hour late. Ah well, eventually we got on, and although according to Liam we would all die, we arrived Shanghai after a mere two hours. On the airport (where Carl was still drunk and jumped on the luggage band) we took a bus to people's square and from there on a taxi to our hostel. During the bus ride it already occured to us how huge Shanghai is. The busride took an hour and it was all through urban area. And imagen this was still only on one side of the river that splits the city in two...

Our hostel was great by the way. We paid 7 euros a night for it and we had a four bedroom dorm for it with our own bathroom. The best part of the room were the sheets, which were the best sheets I have felt in 6 months!

That day we didnt do much special. The weather was quite bad and we decided to first explore our neighbourhood (and discovered they were selling kebabs and meatsticks!) and then went to the bund which is probably the biggest attraction of Shanghai. It's probably because of the weather but we didn't find it that special. The buildings weren't lit up and the there were hardly any people, so it was kinda boring. After that we tried to find some bars or clubs but managed to find only one and it was too expensive for us, so we left that one. After that we just bought some drinks and went to a park to hang out there, was quite nice.

The next day we woke up around two in the afternoon and decided to go do some touristy stuff. First we took a cab to the old city of Shanghai. It was a big tourist bubble, but for a reason. It was basically a traditional small chinese town with the houses you would probably first think of when you think of China. All the buildings looked real traditional. They still looked 'new' because they were probably just restaurated.

I bought Mao's red book here and we ended up buying real tourists shirts for 3 euro each and walked around with those shirts the next day; real gweilo style!

After the old city we went to the city exhibition hall of urban planning where we some a maquette of the whole city, which is absolutely huge. This was really cool to see. There were also exhibitions about future plans for Shanghai (They'll be hosting the world expo in 2010 so much changes are scheduled for that year, including the opening of a brand new airport that is able to receive no new giant planes from airbus, the A380), which all looked impressive as did the exposition about old, pre-wartime, Shanghai where I just read a book about (empire of the sun, read it, it's good). Seeing all these plans is kind of what Shanghai stands for; adding the latest things to their city for the sake of having the newest and biggest whats currently available. A perfect example is the Maglev train that runs somewhere in Shanghai. It was the first ever Maglev train in the world and what I heard is that it's so expensive (8 euro's for a 12 minute trip) that basically nobody uses it. Still, China is proud...

Another thing that struck me is that Shanghai is probably the most capitalistic of a city I have ever seen in my life. Certainly when you think about China being the biggest communist country in the world currently... quite ironic. Whereever you look you will see mc. donalds, 7 elevens and other pure western stores and franchises. They love it...

That night we went to find some more nightclubs and we found some. The first one wasn't that great so we were off to find 'babyface,' appearently the 'hottest' place in Shanghai. We eventually found it but we couldn't get in because I was wearing sandals instead of shoes (my shoes are in a box on their way back to the Netherlands). Eventually did Olli and me end in the same club as we were the day before and had some beers in the park before ariving back at the hostel around 7 am.

That day we all got up at 2 pm again and went across the river to the business centre of the city. Some landmarks that are there are the pearl tower and the Jin Mao tower, the biggest tower in China and the fifth biggest building in the world. However, a new building is currently build just next to it and this one will be bigger than this one. How tall, I'm not sure, but it wouldn't suprise me if they want to top the one in Taipei on Taiwan. We wanted to go to the observation deck but found out it is too expensive. We went in anyway and went up to the hotel lobby, which was at the 53rd of the 93 story building. I can say the view was still amazing and we could see well over Shanghai (and witness that the city just never ends).

After this we head over to the pearl tower to see how much it costs to get up there and found out it's basically just a big tourist attraction with no further function. It's expensive to get up there so we again didn't do that. We eventually decided to sit at the river side and have a beer. After that we crossed the river through some weird tunnel (imported from France, this says it all) and walked around Shanghai before getting back to the hostel.

That night we wandered around our hostel area and basically did the same at previous evenings/nights, drink in the park. This time we were talked to by a park cleaner who knew surprising a lot about Europe and different countries. His english wasn't that good but he seemed very happy to meet some gweilo's and seemed quite clever. We therefore suspect that this guy was actually was the mayor of Shanghai in disguise.

That evening we went to bed at around 2 because we had an early wake up. The next morning we had the train back to Guangzhou at 9.50 am and we took a cab to the south station. We had seats and I was kinda not looking forward to it, because I can never really sleep on seats and from previous experience (read my Vietnam part) I expected it to be a big mess.

The train wasn't that bad. We had a lot of fun, but my fear partly came through; I didn't sleep at all. This is by far the longest I ever been in a train (followed by the 17 hours in Vietnam), and we were just fooling around with the Chinese that were there. They were very interested in us because most of the foreigners take the sleeper cabin when embarking on a trip like this. I don't really blame them for that, but we did have a lot of fun. We for instance met the brother of Jackie Chan (we eventually turned out to be the real Jackie anyway!) and met the Chinese reincarnation of Einstein. I'm not going to explain the jokes, but they just needed an honourable mention on this page. During the trip Liam also got engaged to a crazy chinese girl, so everyone was happy.

Arriving in Guangzhou I was dead tired and couldn't wait to get on the bus to Hong Kong. I got on the bus at 9 am and I just fell a sleep straight away. We arrived at the Shenzen/Hong Kong border at around 11 where I had to go through customs and change to another that would bring me downtown. I had to get off at Kowloon but because I slept through my stop I ended up on central. There I contacted Patrick and got on the MTR back to Kowloon. Patrick was so nice to bring me to his appartment and gave me the key so I could be mobile. I wasn't that mobile, because after checking my email I basically fell a sleep straight away... and since I'm getting a bit tired right now (1.30 am local time) I'm going to finish here and get on with the Hong Kong story another day. Btw for more Shanghai pictures check the photo album section of this page. I uploaden all the pictures from the last party in Macau there as well.

Good Night!

Travel, party and beyond!

2007-06-10T08:35:00.000+02:00

It's now sunday, June 10th, 2007. I will be leaving Macau next thursday, and with that my exchange will officially come to an end. However, I will not leave for home yet; China is a big country, and I have some time on my hands now, so I'm currently preparing for the 'big trip'. Officially the trip will not start untill the 24th of this month, when Jamie comes back from the Philipines and we set off for Guilin.

But since that is still two weeks away, I have some time to cover. First of all I still have one exam on wednesday. A day later I will leave for Shanghai for four days from the 14th untill the 19th. After that I will go to Hong Kong to stay with Patrick and Bart. Than finally I will head back for Macau on the 24th to cross the border with Zhuhai and take a bus there to Guilin that evening. The Shanghai trip should be something good. I'll be going with Olli, Carl and Carl's brother, Liam.

It's kinda weird, knowing that everything is going to end now. The five months I've been here so far went fast and I don't have the feeling that these months have actually already passed. More and more people will be leaving now. The two yanks, Matthew and Stephen have left already for their Asia-into-Europe over land trip. We had a good party last friday however, which is the last one before everyone leaves. I've made some pictures that I will put in the photo album as soons as possible. This was only a small update, but I will post a bigger one after Shanghai when I have the time. So untill then... bye bye!

Bungy! (and backwards!)

2007-05-09T14:45:00.000+02:00

So ok, I got lucky and won some money in the casino. So where to spend it on? That's right; bungee, baby!! I have to say, once standing on that platform and looking down the worlds highest commercial bungee is something that gets to you. I wasn't too nervous before the jump. Not even when on the platform in the waiting line. But when my feet where finally bonded in and I had to 'walk' to the edge, I started to get really nervous. I couldn't believe I was going to jump of a tower. It's just one of those things that are so bizar and unnatural that it probably works on your nerves, whoever you are. Especially the first time. I was quite happy I didn't have to do it alone. Rasmus and Matthew, two fellow exchange students, were doing the jump as well, so I had someone to talk to before. They really enjoyed it as well, so I would recommend this to anyone. Because it's so high you make a 4 to 5 second fall and it's actually feeling like a real freefall before the rope reaches it's maximum stretching capability. After that you bounce up and down for about 5-6 times before coming to a halt. After that you still hang in the air for a few minutes, till you reach a point where it gets a bit anoying. Luckily they get you down quite quickly.
I had a pass which gave me the opportunity to do the jump twice for the same price, so I went again. Not nervous anymore I went up there and they told me I could do it backwards if I wanted to. I wanted to. Getting up the platform was a bit more difficult because I couldn't see the edge. This was a bit scary but eventually I managed. After that it was all the same. It was really cool to see the ground 'slowly' appear since you don't see it for the first second or so. This time Iris, Jaime, Ana and Paula where waiting down at the ground together with Matthew and Rasmus, who finished their jump by then. Jaime made some pictures from that side so I wonder how those come out. I will try to get a hold of them soon and then post them in my photo album. Untill then I posted a selection on this page for now...

First Jump:

Second Jump:

The Flying Dutchman That Didn't Fly

2007-05-05T09:23:00.000+02:00

Unfortunately, I didn't do the jump. The thing is this: Jamie won a ticket which stated 'two jumps for the price of one', so we assumed that two persons could jump and each could do it half priced. Now we found out that this applied only to one person, so he or she could make the jump twice and pay for one. Jamie made the jump yesterday and we came to the platform to see it from there. It looked really cool and I almost signed up to do it, but for now I don't have the money for it would cost me over a hundred euros. Hopefully I make some money with my lead role in the Bruce Lee movie and still make the jump soon. Fingers crossed...

Flying Dutchman & Flying Crazy Chinese

2007-05-02T10:22:00.000+02:00

Because I'm still devastated by the outcome of the Dutch soccer competition I decided to throw myself off a building. It looks like friday is the day that I'm going to do what I have been wanting to do for a long time now, and that's doing a bungy jump. This jump will happen from the Macau tower, which tops at 338 metres, but has commercial sky- and bungyjumps at the 233 metre level. They started doing jumps since last december. Since it is a tower a person is not completely free to bounce all ways when jumping, but it is controlled by two lines on the side that will keep a person from hitting the tower itself. I met people that already did the jump and they told me how amazing it is... once you finally pull yourself together and jump. I'm pretty sure it will be an amazing thing to do, at least I hope so.

In other news, not much is happening in Macau right now. Yesterday (tuesday) was a public holiday because of labour day. Where the rest of China has a whole week of, Macau and Hong Kong only have one day. Currently Iris' boyfriend Jonathan and Jamie's friend Floor are here so we visited the Sands casino two days in a row. An Appearantly famous Chinese female singer was performing and all of the sudden I was standing within a crazy chinese crowd. She was throwing dolls in the crowds and people started fighting to get it. I guess I'm not completely Chinese yet cause it didn't feel the urge to throw myself in there to confiscate what is 'mine'. But then again, I guess I have a lot to learn yet...
As I mentioned before, days are getting a bit slower here in Macau, but at the other hand the end is getting closer and soon enough I have to start learning (my parents are reading this, what do you want me to say?). After that the trip through China will start so I have something to look forward to.
Word on the street is that the exchange students are going to make it in Hollywood soon. It seems that in Guangzhou a movie and/or serie is going to be shot about the life of Bruce Lee. They are searching for 2000 people that have a western appearance to have a role in the movie. We send out an email applying for this, so we'll just see what comes from it. I'm sure we can chance the movieworld for eternity with our classic performance of a pedestrian getting its ass kicked by a crazy flying Chinese. It doesn't get much better than that!

Easter Trip to Malaysia part dos

2007-04-17T10:48:00.000+02:00

Ok, so where were we? Ow yeah at the top of mt. Kota Kinabalu. Here are some more pictures to give an impression:

And to top it of I tried to make a panorama shot, but I'm not to sure if the result is everything I hoped for. Well, anyway:

As can be seen on the panorama shot, the summit was completely located above all clouds. It was advised to start the hike back as soon as possible because the sun gets really strong at that point. At around half past 6 I started to notice that, and we started to hike back. The hike back to the base camp only took an hour and a half, but already took al lot from me, since there is constant pressure on my legs. We stayed for about 45 minutes at the camp, packing our stuff and resting for a bit, before making the last hike back down. The hike down was supposed to take half the time of going up, so this would mean it should take us 2.5 hours. For some reason I had more trouble going down than going up and after 3 hours we reached the starting point again. My legs were hurting, and I had trouble just to walk normally. Lonely planet describes this to be one of the easiest hikes... well I think I really have some work out to do to be able to climb some of the thougher ones!

That afternoon we came back in Kota Kinabalu at around 2pm and we checked in the hostel again. I guess the owner was happy to see us again because he gave us a private room instead of the dormitory this time, for the same rate. Unfortunately the room didn't have AC and I'm still not sure what would have been better, the dorm which had AC or the room. I didn't have trouble sleeping so I guess it doesn't matter much.
That day we just took it easy and we wanted to end the day mellow at the same bar that we went before to drink a few beers. I guess fate decided differently, because we met the Americans again at that place and ended up partying untill four in the morning (this might have been a different time, but my guess is around four). That night one of the girls convinced me to take a diving course with her, and since guys are weak (and I wanted to do the course for a long time already) I said yes. The next day (saturday already) I woke up reasonably early to go sign up for the diving course. I also received a book which could be used for self study in order to make the dives easier. However, it's quite hard to learn when you are on a holiday.
That same day we went with the same group to a swamp, which took a two hour drive to reach. Since Olli and me made a last minute decision to join the van was really crowded. Upon arrival, a lot of people were sore from the trip... well for what it's worth, sorry bout that!
The trip through the swamp was both fun and in my opinion showed some good scenery. We were basically taken on a boat and made a trip over small rivers that led through the jungle. On the way we saw monkeys, water buffalos and some birds and stuff. Especially the sundown was beautiful. I tried to make a good picture of that:

That evening we enjoyed a good dinner at a restaurant at the starting/end point of the tour. After that the guide brought us to a place where we could see fireflies. It was already dark and one of the trees was filled with those flies, it seemed like the tree was decorated for christmas or something. No pictures of that unfortunately...
After returning to KK we decided to go to bed early, since i had to start the diving course quite early. This was probably the first saturday in Asia where I got to bed early, it's like a completely different world out there! well anyway...

The next day I went to Ming's hostel (the girl that I was taking the diving course with) to be picked up by Rueben, our diving instructor. We went to the harbour and took a small boat that would bring us to one of the islands for our first dive. We were joined by a group chinese people who were dropped of before we made our dive. We had our course with a guy from Singapore called Jason. The first day consisted of two dives, and we had to perform some skills like removing the mask and putting it back on under water and that kind of stuff. Every dive ended with a fun part which was basically a half hour swing in the surroundings of the boat. We swam near coral reefs, which at first didn't look so good since fisherman blown up a part of it to catch fish. However, during the second dive we saw a sea turtle swimming very near us. This was quite cool and we tried to follow it. Unfortunately it went too deep (or were we too slow??).
That evening we went out with Rueben and some of his friends. Ming's friends all rented a car to go to Brunei and wouldn't return untill late the next day. It was a really good evening and we had a lot of fun, especially in a certain questionable karaoke bar.
The next day we had to go diving again and this time we went to our maximum depth which is 18 metres. Again we had to perform some skills and had the fun dive after that. At this spot the coral was way better and the scenery was more colourful. Ming brought an underwater cam and I wonder how those pics will turn out to be. I really enjoyed the whole diving course and I am happy Ming convinced me to do it. Can't wait to go diving 'for real' now.

That evening was the last evening in Malaysia and we took it easy by sitting on a terrace and having a few beers. At around two o'clock at night Ming's friends came back from there trip. Appearantly they had an amazing roadtrip and the story (as far as I could make up a story from everything I heard from them) was truly hilarious. The next day most of them had to get up early to catch a flight to Thailand, where Olli and me had to back to Macau. Our flight was at 1pm and it took 3 hours again. Coming back to Macau wasn't too great since it was very cloudy, and the temperature was low. This fact, together with the memory of a good holiday made me quite bummed out to be back, especially because I had three exams in the following two days (I'm still hoping for a miracle)...

Well this finishes my report about Malaysia. I highly recommend everybody to go to Malaysia, especially since appearantly there are way more beautiful in the country. This makes me want to go back in the future, and if I have a chance I certainly will.

But for now; thank you, bye bye!

Easter Trip to Malaysia part uno

2007-04-13T10:08:00.000+02:00

March was a quiet month for me in Macau, but April started out great! Because of the Easter festivities, school was closed for four days. Including the weeekends this means we had six days of. Olli and me took one day extra off and set out for Malaysia on tuesday the third of April. After a three hour we arrived in Kota Kinabalu(KK)which is on the Borneo part of Malaysia and is the capital of the Sabah province.

Once we got out the plane at around 7.30pm we immediately noticed that things are a bit different when it's the weather concerned than in Macau. Where Macau is hidden under a big pack of clouds for a month already, the sky was very bright in KK and the temperature was about 10 degrees higher than in Macau. This promised a lot of good, but troubles started once I wanted to cross the border. Appearantly some guy with a name similar to mine is on the blacklist, and since some people have problems with their eyesight, I had to go to the immigration office. After inspecting my passport properly, there was no problem and I could finally enter the country. The airport is suprisingly close to the city, especially since we were assuming that KK would a big city.
On the contrary however, the city is quite small and it's hard to imagen that 400.000 people are supposed to live there. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing because it was easy to get around, and with the lonely planet as a guide we could find an affordable hostel right away. For some reason I couldn't remember the name of the hostel the whole week, but now I do; 'Planet Backpackers'. Not that it really matters...
Well anyway, that day we didn't do much since it was already late. We figured that the next day we should go try to get to some travel offices to see if there are any places available for the hike to mt. Kota Kinabalu.
The next day (Wednesday) we woke up too late to go to the mountain that day so we decided to just see if we could get a good deal. We found out that because of the easter holiday, all accommodation on the mountain was already full and there was basically no option of going to hike the mountain the next day, or any day while we were still there. There was one agency that wanted to sell us a package, but we found it way too expensive, and we figured that if they could offer us something, there must be a place for us if we just head out there. So we decided to just take the first bus to the mountain the next day and hope for the best. That evening we took it easy and we went for a few drinks 'downtown'. There we met some people who are studying in Hong Kong as part of an exchange program. I guess it's a small world after all...

The next morning we took the first bus to the mountain which departed at 7am. We arrived at the entrance two hours later, to hear that all accommodation is in fact full and that we couldn't go up. We were of course dissapointed, but stubborn as we are, we still tried to see if we had any chance at all. We went to talk to some kind of supervisor to see if there was a possibility to do the hike in one day, but this wasn't possible. However, he did tell us that if we hiked up to the base camp where the accommodation was, we should ask the manager if he could settle something for us. That was enough for us and we quickly went to unpack our backpacks and pay for the whole thing, so that we could get on our way. Not knowing if we would actually get any place to sleep we set out for the top. Our enthousiasm was high at the start, but we heard some rumors about certain stairs that would make the hike less easy. Unfortunately for us fit people those rumors became reality.

This picture shows Olli getting up the hill. I'm guessing this was still in the optimism phase since there weren't much stairs yet. At this point we also saw old woman coming down the mountain telling us the summit is absolutely amazing, so we figured it couldn't be that bad. Since we are supposed to be in the prime of our life, it should be a piece of cake for us.
Five hours later we knew better. We started the hike around 11am and reached the base camp at around 4pm. There we found out that there still weren't any cancellations and that we probably had to sleep on some mattrasses on the flour. Well, fine by us! we were so tired that we couldn't care less, as long as we had a place to sleep and would be able to make a go for the summit the next day. One hour later we got told that four people cancelled and that we could have a proper place to sleep along with two Sweedish people we met on the way. Ofcourse we were pleasantly surprised and quickly made it to our accommodation which was still a 10 minute hike uphill. Since our legs were so sore and the fact that we are in such a good shape made us have a little break during this little hike. This was the perfect to promise not to drink and in Olli's case smoke anymore (yes, we too can be naive). Our hotel room was actually a little house which has a small kitchen on the side. Not that we needed it, but that's not what counts at that moment. I must also note that the view from that place wasn't the worst I ever seen:

And a pic from our mountain hut:

That same day we went to bed at 7pm (!) which was even too late for me since I wanted to sleep basically since the very moment I reached the camp. We had to get up at 2am again to get breakfast at the restaurant. We would also meet our guide there and together we set sail to the top at 3am. The goal was to reach the summit for 6am when the sun comes up. Appearantly (according to many grandma's on the way) the view from the top is amazing and worth all the trouble. Refreshed as we were we reached the top in three hours and arrived at 4095 metres at 5.45am. And indeed, the sun did come up at 6, and it was absolutely astonishing. The temperature at the top was around 5 degrees celcius and my fingers were freezing when I tried to make pictures, but when the sun set this was all forgotten. The view looked something like this... not to bad ey!

Since I am such a lazy person, I will stop typing now, and write a second part when I feel like it again. This will hopefully be tomorrow... well anyway,

Thank you, bye bye!

Small update from Macao

2007-03-20T07:25:00.000+01:00

Since I'm back from Vietnam, life returned to 'normal' quite soon here in Macao. I've been here now since the 25th of January, so soon the two month mark will be reached and crossed. That will officially be a new personal record, since the longest I have been away from home would be around two months, back in Sardinia. It definitly doesn't feel that long though, since time just seems on flying by very fast, and I'm pretty sure that when June comes and I have to leave this place, it will probably be too soon. Perhaps not though, we'll just see what happens.

As I said, since I'm back from Vietnam, not much really changed. This doesn't mean nothing happened though. In the meantime I have been to Hong Kong twice. Last weekend, and the weekend before that. First I went to visit a friend of my who lives in the Netherlands, in the same town I live in (Helmond). His name is Patrick and he's doing an internship for half a year there. He showed me around Kowloon and Hong Kong Island and at night we went to have some drinks at some bars. From 5pm till 9pm there is happy hour in Hong Kong at most places, you will get two drinks for the price of one... not too bad I must say. However it's still rather expensive. I didn't mind however, since it was the first time I have been to Hong Kong and I just wanted to have fun. Eventually we ended up in a bar where they had an open mic night and Patrick, Bart (patricks roommate) and me ended up playing and singing wonderwall by Oasis. I'm sure it sounded really horible but at least we had good fun with that. Definately something to do again in the future.
Last weekend I went back to Hong Kong to buy a new camera. Eventually I ended up buying a Canon eos 400D camera. It is the first time I bought a mirror reflex camera and so far I'm still trying to figure out the best way of getting an optimal result. The possibilities with that camera just seem endless, so it makes a nice little toy for me to play with and eventually shooting some (hopefully) really nice pictures with when I'm going on travelling. Macau can actually be quite a fun playground when it comes to this kind of things, since the city is really versatile. I'm still planning on taking a day for myself and just go around Macau with that camera and see what I get from it. The results, if presentable, will then be posted on this website (ofcourse).

When it comes to travelling I haven't been sitting still either. Next trip will be to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia. I will be going on the the third of april and will return on the tenth. Malaysia is a country I always wanted to visit and now I have to chance. I will go with Olli, an exchange student as well, from Finland. We haven't planned all our activities yet but one thing that we want to go do for sure is climb mt. Kina Kotabalu, which peaks at around 4200 metres. This will be quite the challenge and will take us approximately two days to complete. I can't wait to witness the view from the top and hopefully I end up with some good pictures from that trip.

Since that trip is still two weeks ahead of me, I need to find a way to fill in that time with doing stuff in Macau, and I must say that some interesting things are coming up in the region. Here in Macau (and in Hong Kong at the same time) there will be an international film festival held in the end of March, and there are some movies I might end up seeing. These movies are very local and most of them are shot in Macau. I never seen any of those, so I'm looking forward in seeing what kind of movies are presented on the festival. Also in the end of march, and one weekend before I go to Malaysia, there will be a big rugby tournament in Hong Kong, called the Hong Kong Sevens. All tickets are sold out, but the whole of Hong Kong will be turned upside down by this event. I might be going there as well, since I like rugby and I would want to see what this event does with the city.

All in all this post turned out to be a bit longer than I was expecting it to be. I think I gave a good update on what's happening with me at the moment. After the Malaysia trip I will give a big update on it and see if I have some decent pictures to share. I hope so...

For now, Thank you, bye bye!

Talk about perfect timing! (Vietnam part 3)

2007-02-28T06:23:00.000+01:00

It's Wednesday now and I had to stop typing yesterday because my new roommate arrived. Well actually, I'm his new roommate since he already lived here, and just came back from a month in Beijing, where he is from. His name is Neo and I have to share my room with. He seems like a fun guy who likes sleeping, since it's 1:40 pm now and he just got up. Well, anyway, I think I am going to finish the Vietnam retrospective today. I noticed it's becoming quite a big story, so not everyone will have the patience to read it all. Well, let's say it's just fun for my parents and myself in the future to read it back. Well anyway, here it goes again...

Before I proceed with the story, I uploaded a video from the motorbike 'adventure'. It was Jamie's first time on a motorbike and the road was a bit questionable... Well see it for yourself:

Ok, so we were at the floating village. When the boat stopped many small boats approached us to sell fruit or offer a short boat trip around some smaller Islands and through some caves. We bought some mandarins and went on one of the boats. It quite hard to call it a boat actually, since it just looked like a piece of wood with a motor. Well, at least it served its function. After we went back on the boat we went to a floating fish market. Fish markets in Asia are way different than the ones in the Netherlands. First of all; all fish lives. The fish market consisted of several holes in in the floor which served as a basin for the fish. When somebody wanted to buy a fish, one would be taken out and beaten to death. That's the big idea at least. However, the fish we saw being beaten didn't die. It was full of blood but still trying to get away. Not really a pretty sight...
After that we got back on the boat to head back to the shore. Arriving back on the land we had to wait for a little while before the bus came and took us to a restaurant where we had lunch. Unfortunately I couldn't eat much since my throat was still really thick and aching. When lunch was finished, we headed back to Hanoi. After a three hour drive we arrived back at our hotel. Before we left for Halong Bay we already bought train tickets to Sapa for wednesday the 21st; the day we came back from Halong. That wednesday afternoon we arrived back at around 3 pm and had to wait until that evening to get the train. We wandered around and had some dinner before heading for the train station. We bought soft seat tickets and we expected the same kind of seats that we had on the two previous train trips. This turned out to be a bit different. The seats were partly soft and in the back there was a strange construction with wood and a sort of basket that would support your back. However this was far from comfortable, so when I woke up the next day my back didn't feel as fresh as it did before. Ah well... I suppose we have to take that kind of things for granted.
The train didn't go to Sapa directly but to a border town called Lao Cai, all the way in the north of Vietnam, almost in China. From there we took a cab/van that brought us to Sapa.

Arriving in Sapa we had to find a hotel. Sapa has become more and more touristy over the years and this is well noticable. Most of the buildings in town are actually hotels or restaurants or both. The lonely planet guide suggested some hotels that were supposed to be cheap and offer and amazing view from the room. Of course, they were either full or non existent any more. We than went to a hotel that offer a lesser view but was recommendent by the lonely planet because of its good and knowledgeable personel. The room we got was 7 USD for one night and was the best value for our money we had so far. Both beds had mosquito nets, which can come in handy in this malaria region. That day we went to a nearby village which was a 3 kilometre walk. It was easy to walk since it was downhill. The name of the village was Cat Cat village and we actually had to pay to be able to enter it. The villagers where all part of a hill tribe called the Black Thai. Back in Sapa I bought a bracelet from them that is hand made. There were actually selling all kinds of stuff that they were making right there on the streets. They still wear traditional clothing and their main survival method is producing rise throughout the year. They are self-providing, so all products that are produce are meant for themselves. The Black Thai people look like this:

So that afternoon and early evening we walked through Cat Cat village and the surrounding mountain passes. We found a road that led straight trough the mountains. Not many people went there and the nature was absolutely beautiful. The night before in the train we didn't get much sleep, so when we finally were heading back we felt very tired, and we still had to climb the mountain back to Sapa. Since we ran out of money we could pay a motorbike guy that offered to bring us back to Sapa, so walking was the only way. When we finally got back to the hotel we were so tired both of us immediately fell a sleep. It was only 6 pm by that time. We got up at around eight again to get some food but after that we went straight to sleep again.

Cat Cat village and surroundings:

The next day was friday and was the last day before setting off back to China again. At 9 am we set off for a hiking tour that would last untill three o'clock in the afternoon. This trip was really amazing. We had one guide and a girl from the States joined us, so the group consisted of four persons. This was a tour that tourists normally don't do, which was true because we didn't see much tourists untill the last 1 or 2 hourse since we walked to a village called Ta Phin, which serves as a tourist attraction. Instead of hiking most tourists prefer going to the village by bus or taxi...
The tour itself was really amazing. The weather was great and the views were even better than on the first day. So many rise fields make this place one of the best spots I ever visited. Some impressions:

That same day we had to get back to Lao Cai to catch a train back to Hanoi. This would be an overnight train again. After some troubles we managed to get a hold of some soft seat tickets, where at first we could only get hard seat tickets. Luckily this time, the seats were actually the ones like we had the first two times so this night was a bit more comfortable than the previous train journey. We arrived back in Hanoi early at 4 am and took a cab to the bus station. We still had to wait a while for the bus going to Lang Son, on the way back to China. On the bus station we met three chinese people, two guys and woman, that were also heading back to China. They wanted to reach Nanning that day, the same as us. So we travelled with them. They were also the reason we found out that we could have had way cheaper ways of transportation on the way to Vietnam, since they way bargaining way better than we did. This is not really surprising since they didn't have the problem which is the language barrier, but still.
When we arrived in Pingxian we found out that all busses to Guangzhou and Zhuhai (Places near Macau) were all full. A bus to Nanning was 4 hours away so we decided to rent a taxi with the five of us for the three hour drive. The bus was in the worse condition and I wasn't to sure it would even make Nanning! Fortunately we got there, to only find out that we could get a bus ticket at 7 pm the next day to Zhuhai. We had to wait 27 hours! We now had to chose between either waiting on the bus station or search for a hotel with the chance of them all being full. Fortunately for us, the chinese woman knew a man who knew some other man with money. So we managed to get into a four star hotel for only 12 euros per person! This was really heaven after all the busses and trains we had to sleep in. Completely rested we spend the next day in Nanning and went to the bus station that evening.
In the bus to Zhuhai I could sleep and when we finally arrived I slept for about one hour in total. We still had to wait for the border crossing to Macao to be opened, which would be at 7 am. We arrived in Zhuhai at 4.45 am. I was home at about 8 am and had to be back on school at 11 am. Talk about perfect timing!

Well, this finishes my story about Vietnam. I must say that I had a very tiring but memorable and above all great time. I would recommend the country to anyone, since it holds so much beautiful places and the people are (or at least can be) really nice. Well, for now... Thank you, bye bye!

So much to see, so little time... (Vietnam part 2)

2007-02-27T12:32:00.000+01:00

It's Tuesday now and I'm back at Macao. We arrived yesterday morning at 4.45 am at Zuhai where we could cross the border to Macao at 7 am. 'Normal' life was starting immediately since I had to go to school 3 hours after I came back from Vietnam, talk about perfect timing! Well anyway, since nothing really special happens in Macao currently I will try to finish the Vietnam story and perhaps show some pictures as well. So here it goes...

Picking up where the story ended, we were at Vietnam at 12 o'clock in the afternoon. As soon as we crossed the border lots of taxis and ran towards us to offer their services. We tried to do some bargaining and managed to get a fairly priced one that would get us to the nearest place where there is a bus station. We soon found out that taxi drivers have friends that offer the same kind of service, so he drove us to one of them that offered to bring us to Hanoi. A bit naive as were we just accepted the price, happy enough to go to Hanoi so quickly. Afterwards we found out that this probably wasn't the best price we could pay. Well at least we learned a lesson from it. After waiting for a while in Lang Son (the name of the place) we finally set of to Hanoi. The reason for waiting was that the van was not full. When we set of the van seemed full to us, but appearantly this wasn't the case for the Vietnamese themselves. Along the way, many people were picked up and stuffed in the van. At the end the van was so full that people were just sitting on each others laps or on little chairs that were placed at various spots in the van. I never saw a vehicle as full as this one, it really showed the true meaning of efficiency.
After a 2.5 hour drive, Hanoi was finally reached. The city turned out to be extremely busy and the streets were so packed that it took us another 45 minutes to go through most of it. By reading the lonely planet we saw that we had to be in the old quarter, so as soon as we thought we'd reached it, we got out of the van. It was really good to be able to feel your legs again at that time.
So there we were standing, in the middle of busy Hanoi were motorbikes form the image of the neighbourhood and where most shops and stores are out for display on the streets so that walking gets to be an adventure on its own. We found the street where we were standing in on the map in the Lonely planet guidebook and we picked a hotel we wanted to pay a visit to see if it would suite us. So we just started walking. At one point we entered a street where lots of hotels were situated and many people are shouting to convince tourists to stay in their oh so lovely and cheap hotel. It one point we were tired of walking and went with a guy that offered a double room for only 8 USD (U.S. Dollars, 1 dollar would make 16.000 Dong. One euro would make 20.000 Dong, which is the official Vietnamese currency. USD is also accepted and most products were double priced). We looked at the room and it was quite big. We were really surprised that it would only cost us 8 Dollars, so we took it. At that point we were quite tired and sick of carrying our bags through the busy and somewhat dirty streets of Hanoi. Well, at least we had a hotel, so we could explore Hanoi in a more relaxing way. Here are some pictures to give an impression on what's Hanoi like:

When we had taken a shower after checkin in for our room, we wanted to book a ticket to the south as soon as possible, knowing that Chinese new year was coming up and that all transportation would probably be full. In Hanoi there are no real travel agencies. Instead, most hotels offer booking services and are the place to book transportation as well. At least that is what we assumed at the time. We talked to a staff member of our hotel to see what's available. He recommended us to go to either Sapa or Halong Bay since that were the places where most tourists go to when visiting Hanoi. We didn't really know about those places and wanted to go more south, initially trying to reach Ho Chi Minh City. Soon enough we let go of this plan and wanted to reach Ninh Binh first. The hotel staff member arranged a bus for us, which would depart the next day, early in the morning. Happy with our tickets we went walking through Hanoi. We mainly walked trough the old quarter of Hanoi since this part was recommended by lonely planet. After a while we reached a lake which is situated in the old quarter. We started thinking that going to Ninh Binh would not be the best solution, since would be stuck there in the weekend since the Tet festival would be held and all trains and busses would stop going for at least two days. At least, this is what the lonely planet would make us believe. Next to the lake there were some hotels as well and we saw one which displayed a train schedule to different cities in Vietnam. At that point we were really convinced that the trains would all be full since this also was the case in China. We asked about this to the attendent and she said that she had some train tickets available for the next day in the evening to a city called Hue. We were really surprised to hear this and immediatly decided to buy these tickets, since we thought they would run out soon. Hue is a bigger city than Ninh Binh and we figured there would be a good city to celebrate Chinese new year. At least way better than Ninh Binh. The only problem was that we had to cancel the bus tickets. When we got back at the hotel, the guy who helped us get the ticket got really mad and demanded that we had to pay the ticket. Unfortunately there was no way to get out of this deal so we ended up paying it anyway. When then knew that we would think twice before making hasty decisions in the future...

The next day we had to wait for the train that would depart in the evening to Hue and would take all night. We than went to the Mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. Upon arrival we found out that it is closed on Fridays and Mondays. This was kinda shitty for us, since the day being Friday. No Ho Chi Minh's body for us...bummer. Next to the Mausoleum the former house of Ho Chi Minh was open for public, so we visited it. It was quite a nice place, and the man had quite a big garden to spent his time in we saw. After that we went to see some temples and eat in the old quarter. By that time it was already evening and after dinner we went back to the hotel to pick up our bags and went to the train station. The train we took looked like this:

When we boarded and left we found out that the train was almost empty! It was the 16th of february and Chinese new year would be in the night of the 17th we assumed. We met some Italian ladies in the train and soon found out that it would be best to buy train tickets in the train stations since hotels would overcharge you if you don't look out. We haven't really looked out, thinking it was a great opportunity of getting a train ticket during these times. We were charged to much. Well, another lesson learned there I suppose. The journey was really relaxed and we had big seats since we could sit anywhere we wanted. Around 11 pm, all of the sudden we received a bag containing some goods from the train personel. Because of the Chinese new year they said. The bag containing a sausage, some candy, a can of beer, and a card which said happy new year. We were really surprised by this, still assuming that Chinese new year was one day away. At 12 o'clock however we saw fireworks from the windows and we realised that Chinese new year in Vietnam was one day earlier than in China. We were destined to celebrate in an emtpy train... how sad...

After a decent night of sleep we arrived in Hue at approximately 8.30 am. When departing from the train station we immediatly saw that Hue is a much quieter and cleaner town than Hanoi. Much to our relief, we saw that the streets are much broader and less people sell food and other stuff on the streets. We then proceeded to the place where all hotels were situated according to the lonely planet. We found a hotel that charged 10 USD for a double room. The room looked decent enough and had a nice bathroom and proper shower, so we took it quite quickly. After taking a shower and changing to some more convenient clothes (in Hue temperatures rise at well over 30 degrees in the afternoon) we went to see that old part of Hue. This old part is located across the 'perfume river' that divides the city between old and new. The old part is completely surrounded by old walls and houses some great buildings that normally could be visited. Unfortunately, due to saturday being new years day, all was closed. This is what the old part looks like when entering:

After the morning walk we went back to the hotel and decided to rent a motorbike! We were really sick of cities and touristy places so we decided to just set of and explore the country side on our own. We had 8 hours on the motorbike starting from 2pm in the afternoon. So off we went!... at least that was the big idea. I couldn't get the motorbike starting at first, so somebody from the hotel had to do it for me. I'm not sure if they still believed me when I said I had done it before. Well, in Vietnam they don't really care about that, they didn't even ask for my drivers license. In the beginning I had trouble driving the thing, and I didn't know how to switch gears. Soon enough I found out and little by little it started to get smoother. By then the tank was almost empty so I had to refill it. After searching for a gasoline station for a while I filled it up to the top, so we could have many hours of driving. So off we went to the countryside!

When we started driving we didn't really had a plan or direction we wanted to go to. We took the first road that would take us outside the city and ended up on small roads that would lead from little village to even smaller villages. The further we went, the more people were suprised seeing foreigners. everybody looked at as and shouted Hello! to us when passing. This was really cool, and we were happy to finally something that wasn't a standard tourist thing. We kept driving for about two hours and visited many villages. By that time the road conditions were very bad and the roads where basically made up by rocks and sand. Far from ideal. We than decided to head back for Hue. After about 20 minutes driving we felt that the motorbike started to behave weird and it became hard to control it. Some people started pointing at our tire. We jumped off the bike and found out that our tire went flat. The situation was that we were basically standing in the middle of nowhere and that nobody spoke any english what so ever.
Luckily for us, a gasoline station was reasonably nearby and after a little walk we reached it. We made clear with body language that the tire needed fixing and some man and woman started with the task. It took them about 45 minutes to fix it. We offered them some money for their help but they refused it. After trying a few more times they almost got mad for me offering them any money. I was quite amazed this kind of people still exist...
We then continued our journey. After five minutes the tire was flat again. We were standing in the middle of a village and more and more people started to surround us. Since nobody spoke english it was quite hard to make clear we needed help. When guy pointed that I needed to go to a house, so I walked up there, leaving Jamie with the bike. When I reached the house I saw that it had a device to pump up tires and other stuff with. There was nobody home though and I didn't know how to work that machine. I just went back to the motorbike seeing that Jamie was surrounded by almost the whole village. People were touching her arms (how can she be so pale!) and offering her a bottle of coke. The people from the gasoline station probably knew that the tire would have problems again because after a few minutes they appeared on their motorbike and took us on their backs. One of them would ride our bike and we had to sit on two others. They would then bring us to a place where appearantly some people would have to tools to fix the tire properly. We arrived at some sort of mansion in another village were apparently a family lived that was quite wealthy; at least to the standard of the region probably. Our bike was taken there and 4 people started getting the tire off. They failed to do so since the exhaust was in the way. They stopped working and started talking a lot. One of them then set off and returned 10 minutes later with someone else carrying a new tire. Our tire was then fixed properly and we paid for the tire. We gave them some extra for the help and finally they excepted it. We could then go back to Hue. It was around 6pm at that time...

In Hue we drove around for a little bit and decided to go and eat something. We there decided that we wanted to go to the Vietcong tunnels that they dug in the war and after that back to Hanoi. We went back to the hotel to book these trips. The tour to the tunnels would set off the next morning at 7 am and we would be back at the hotel by 2 pm, according to the schedule. We then went to the train station to book tickets to Hanoi again. The only problem was that I couldn't get money out of any ATM in the city at that time. They were either empty, not working or not accepting my card, which over time really became frustrating. We had to book the train in the hotel than because I could pay with my credit card there. At the train station we looked at the prices to make sure that we weren't overcharged. Back at the hotel the employee told us they only charge 10,000 Dong service costs, which is 50 eurocent. If we wouldn't have looked at the train rates I'm quite sure they would have charged us way more. The train would leave the next day at 3.30 pm.

The next day we were picked up by a bus that would bring us to the 'Vin Moc' tunnel complex. We arrived in the city of Dong Ha at around 10 am where we had lunch and proceeded to the tunnels. The tunnels are situated in the DMZ (Demilitarised Zone) which divided North and South Vietnam during the war. We went in the tunnels at around 10:30 am. Before we went in we saw a map of the complex. The map showed family rooms and conference rooms, which tooked quite big on the map. The guide told us that around 300 people lived in the tunnels for around 4 years. When we went in the family rooms were very tiny and I couldn't believe that whole families lived there. The conference room was also very tiny and narrow. It's really hard to believe that so many people actually survided in those tunnels for so many years. The tunnels were in the same state as the were in the war, only lightning was added, so we had a good image on what the conditions were for those people. It was really impressive to go through the tunnels.
After this we went back to Dong Ha where the group that would have a program for the whole day would stay and the other group who were on the half day program would go back. The half day ' group' eventually consisted of three persons. Jamie, me and a english guy we had to catch a bus at two. Instead of a propper coach we were again stuffed in a van which would stop on the way to pick up even more people. This looked like this:

We arrived back in Hue at approximately 1 pm again and we still had some time to have lunch and prepare for our journey back to Hanoi. Arriving at the station we saw that it was very busy with people getting back to their homes after celebrating Chinese new year with their families. We thought that we would have the same train as the one on the way to Hue but when entering the train we were unpleasantly surprised. Appearantly the hotel booked us a ticket for a local train that would stop at every small town and would take 17 hours to reach Hanoi. The train really looked messy and dirty. Food was laying everywhere and the train didn't have airconditioning. This was quite a shock and we jumped out of the train to call the hotel. Somebody of the hotel immediately came over on his motorbike and asked if we could switch tickets with the other train, but it was full. We had no choice but to take the local train.
Back in the train everybody was just starring at us and nobody said anything. We just staired back and after a while a started reading a book and listen to some music. After a few hours we got some dinner offered by the train staff, and people started to talk to us a little bit. Although the train was dirty, there was a way better atmosphere than in the empty train to Hue, two days earlier. At one point a man walked up to us with his little baby daughter and placed her on my lap. Jamie and me were really surprised by this and we could see that the girl was as well! She just stared at us and after some minutes started crying. In the meantime the father was standing next to us, proudly, because hey, his daughter was held by some foreigners! It was quite an amazing situation. After this the man returned to his seat with his daughter, while she just kept starring at us. I think this train journey was the biggest culture shock I had so far in Asia...

We arrived back in Hanoi on monday, the 19th of February at 8.15 am. This was a very bad time for us to be arriving in Hanoi, since the trains to Sapa already left and the tours to Halong bay were on their way already as well. We were doomed to stay in Hanoi for the day and night. We decided to have breakfast before searching for a hotel and to decide there what to do next. Initially we wanted to go to Sapa first and finish of in Halong bay, but the plans were changed since trains were full. We checked in into a hotel and started looking for the best deal for going to Halong bay the next day. We found a tour that would last for two days and would set of early the next moring. We would sleep on a boat. It costed us 31 euro, which is quite reasonable if you see how amazing Halong bay is and what you get for that amount of money.
That day we walked through Hanoi again and visited the temple of literature which was closed the last time we were in Hanoi. This temple is considered to be the first University of Vietnam and was established around 1100 A.D. The teachings back then were all based on the eight books that Confusius wrote. The tempel is quite sizeable and it is a very beautiful, but it was too full with tourists. It's hard to enjoy to place with so many people visiting it...
The next day we left at around 8 am to Halong Bay where we entered a boat with about 12 other people, all non-Vietnamese.

When we just set off everyone was quite dissapointed because of the weather. It wasn't too cold but it was very cloudy and the place would look way better if it would be sunny. The main attraction from Halong Bay are the mountains that rise up from the sea and form very small but inaccesible Islands that can only be viewed from boats. Some of the bigger Islands are accesible but are very steep to climb. One of the first things we did, after having lunch was entering an Island which holds a cave. The location of the cave was quite high in the mountain so first we had to climb some stairs. The cave itself was not too small but also not too big. I didn't find it too special but it was nice to visited. The views from the cave into the bay were very pretty, and very suitable to show the ambience of the place:

On this picture our boat is also shown. The boats that are attached to the shore on the left side all look the same and on of them situated in the middle was the one we were on. After the caves we went back to the boat and went to a different bay were we could kayak for about 40 minutes. It was a kayak that hold two people so me and Jamie went in one of them. In one of the mountains near our boat was an small opening that looked like a cave. It could only be entered by kayak or small boat. We went through this and entered a place that very much looked like a lake and was only connected by the sea by this little entrance we went through. It was only quiet since only three kayaks were there and no other (big) boats. This place was just surrounded by mountains. At this point we were thinking that this must be the most beautiful and peaceful place on earth. After ten minutes we left again, since motorised boats entered and carried many tourists and disturbed the peace. Thankfully we had those 10 minutes...
Back at the boat we had heard that we would spent the night at that place and we had time to go swimming around the boat. So this is what we did. The water was quite cold but after a while I got used to it. It was nice to be in the water again, certainly at such a stunning place. Back on the boat that evening we had dinner and after that we had time to relaxed. Most people were reading, making pictures or playing cards. We were playing cards with two people from New Zealand. Unfortunately at that time my throat was aching very much and I ran out of painkillers, so I went to bed early.
The next day we went on again and eventually back to the shore. At first we dropped of a group of people that would stay on an island for one day and then we visited a floathing village. It's quite amazing to see a complete village, a community of people, actually living on houses that float on the see. This is what this looks like:

Due to time difficulties, part two of the story will end here. I hope I can finish it tomorrow...

Chuc Mung Nam Moi! (Vietnam part 1)

2007-02-17T23:28:00.000+01:00

Posting live from Vietnam now, and this is gonna be a big one. At the moment I am in Hue, somewhere in the middle of the country. I had the most incedible day today, incredible in many ways, but I'm going to save that story for last... just for the sake of chronology.

The story of this trip officially starts of a few weeks ago when we decided that we need to go somewhere during chinese new year, because we don't have so much time off, to see asia. The reserved the time after the final exams to visit China and maybe Nepal. The first Idea was to go to Thailand or Singapore. Malaysia or the Philipenes where also considered, but all of these options ended up being thrown away, since flights are very expensive during the time of the year. The Chinees new year, or ' Tet' festival, is the biggest celebration for the Asians, and eveybody is on the move to visit their family and friends. Next I sort of decided to go into China without any plans and just travel around and see what crosses my path. I would do this with Jamie and whoever wanted to join us. Some of the other exchange students at one point to go to Hainan, which is an Island south of Macau, and is called the Chinese Hawaii. Since I didn't want to stay at one place I decided not to go with them. Instead I joined the group that wanted to go travelling throughout Vietnam. This group consisted of Fanny (roommate), Jaimen (Spannish exchange student) and Ana (Jaimen's girlfriend). In the meantime the ' Hainan-group' couldn't find any transport for their trip so it was called off. Jamie then wanted to join us to Vietnam, which wasn't an issue of course. We started to look into the posibilities of reaching Vietnam. The conclusion was that we had to get a Visa in Guangzhou and from that point travel onward to Vietnam over land. The news at that point reported that all trains in China were fully booked untill and after new year, so we feared that this plan would also have no chance. There was a little chance that travelling by bus would still be available. Me and Jamie decided to just take to risk and start travelling a few days in advance to avoid the busy weekend. At that point Jaimen and Ana decided not to go because they didn't want to take the risk and Fanny couldn't mis any classes at school. Conclusion; the 'group' at that point consisted of Jamie and Me.

And so the journey began. We set of at Tuesday night to Zuhai in China, to be able to catch the first bus in the morning to Guangzhou. The first bus would leave somewhere around 6am we thought. The border to China opens at 8am so therefore we had to be in China on Tuesday night. The reason that we had to catch the first bus is because the only way to get a Vietnamese Visa in a day would be by applying for it before 11am.
The way we spent the night in Zuhai was quite extraordinary. We went to a massage place that offers a night sleep if you come in late and order a two hour massage. We were told that this would be the absolute cheapest way to spend the night in Zuhai since it only costed 70 Yuan (appr. 7 euro). The massage was absolutely horible and it seemed more like a torture round than a massage. Well, we spent the night there and got up at 5:30am to catch the first bus. We found out that the first bus would leave at 7:15am. So we still had to wait an hour. We finally got on the bus to Guangzhou and we arrived at 9:30am. We immediately took a cab to the Vietnamese consulate, only to find out that Jamie forget to bring a passport size photograph! By that time we only had an hour left to apply for the visa so we started looking for a shop that takes these kind of photographs. We couldn't find a single one of them and after 45 minutes and pretty much loosing hope of getting it in time, we returned to the consulate. We just decided to just ask if someone knew a place to take the picture and it turned out that the hotel located just next to it had one on the fourth flour. Please don't ask why we just didn't ask in the first place, it didn't seem very logical at the time... yeah, well...
The exact time that we applied for the visa was 10:55am, five minutes before the deadline! Call it good luck, we like to talk about perfect timing! At 3pm we could pick up the passports with the visas again.

In the meantime, we still have any tickets to any places in or nearby Vietnam, so we decided to try getting a train of bus ticket to Nanning, which is a city located reasonably near the Vietnamese border. Directly next to the consulate there was a big travel agency so we decided to walk in and ask if they could arrange something for us. While we feared that all people calling us insane for going would be right by saying eveything was fully booked, the travel agency still had tickets for the bus going to Nanning. We got tickets for the bus leaving at 6:15 pm at the Guangzhou bus station. At that time we finally started to believe that we would make it to Vietnam, and felt really satisfied with the gamble taken. At 3pm we picked up the passports and took a cab straight to the bus station, to make sure that we would make it on time. Arriving at the bus station we found out that the train station was in the same street. We can now tell that the Chinese news wasn't lying. The whole street was packed with people and the police had to block off some parts of the streets to control the crowd. We could be much happier with our pre-booked tickets at that point...
Finding the right gate quite easily on the bus station we had to wait for another 2.5 hours before the bus would depart. We were told by the travel agency that the trip would take a whole night.

After departing from Guangzhou I fell asleep quite quickly. at 9pm we made a stop at a station next to the highway. The problem for me was that I was wide awake afterwards in the bus again. I could sleep untill probably midnight. I woke up at 2am again since the bus was making another stop. At least that was what we were thinking. Everybody was suddenly grabbing their luggage and appearently we already reached Nanning! We didn't really know what to do with this situation so we just grabbed a cab to the train station to see if we could get a nighttrain to Hanoi. This was not the case and so we waited for a couple of hours at the station for the office for international connections would open. However, the box didn't open at 4.40am which was said. We started to lose hope again, untill we grabed the Lonely planet guide and read that there is a regular bus connection from Nanning to Pingxian which is almost on the Vietname border. From that place it was only 18 kilometres to Vietnam. We than rushed to the bus station and managed to get a ticket at 9:30am. It was only 5:30 at that time and we had to wait on the station for another four hours. I was so tired at that point that just couldn't keep my eyes open. I slept for 45 minutes by just sitting up straight. I wasn't the most comfortable sleep ever, but I managed to be a little more awake then. We reached Pingxiang after 2 hours and managed to cross the Chinese-Vietnamese border at exacly 12 o'clock in the morning by foot. We were finally there! We made it...

Part two of the story will follow as soon as possible since I have to leave the computer by now. I don't know when the next post is going to be but I'll try to post as soon as possible. For now Chuc Mung Nam Moi! A happy chinese new year to you all...

Napoleon lives!

2007-02-05T15:48:00.000+01:00

Appearantly Chinese people can chose their own english name. At some point in their life they have to decide which english name they want to use because of the chinese names are not pronouncable for non chinese speakers. Most of them chose quite common names like natalie, stefanie or curtis. Some, however, really like to read history books or watch movies, and base their name on one of their 'heroes'. This causes some hilarious situations (for us, the foreigners)

What we have so far is:
- Windows
- Rain
- Ring
- Beyonce
- Cherry
- Amigo
- Apple
- Prudence
- Phoebe, and the best one;
- Napoleon

That's right, Napoleon lives! I'm sure that this list will grow in the future...

Thank you bye bye

Oh so tired!

2007-02-04T14:44:00.000+01:00

Chinese people are always busy. Chinese people talk, walk and work fast. But sometimes they need a break, a well deserved break, and they take a nap. One might think they would go home to do so, but one would be surprised. Well, to make this story short, chinese sleep everywhere. I spotted chinese sleeping in the park, in a (full) restaurant, in a store and in a moving bus. Call me stupid, but I find this quite extraordinary.

What else happened during the last week except for sleeping chinese? Well, we had the so called ' introduction-week' that the IFT (university) organised. During the introduction week we got to know all the famous places in Macao. We visited old portugese buildings, squares and churches. We visited the Island part of macao that is called 'Taipa', and more to the south 'Coloane'. This part of Macao is way different than the part where I am located. 'Mainland' Macao is a very crowded place, with almost exclusively high buildings. Taipa also has the high buildings, but it's way more spacious and has more nature places. Coloane is being in a totally different place. the town centre feels like a south european village where time sort of stands still. It's really quiet. However, since mainland Macao is now 'full' it's likely that Taipa and Coloane will soon be full with hotels, casino's and what so. Besides sleeping, the chinese also like to expand...

Since the school didn't start yet, I still feel like I'm on holiday. I'm sure I'm not the only one, since all the other exchange students I've met take it really easy and behave like on a holiday. This includes taking lots of pictures and ofcourse partying a lot. Yesterday the whole group went to a karaoke bar. Karaoke bars are normally regarded as something that is typically eastern. I can now confirm this, since we were the only europeans in the place. It's amazing to see chinese completely feel the song and really go for it when they sing. Another thing that is normal to do when going to those kind of places is playing a dice game. I must say I enjoyed playing that game as well, so I understand that they would play it a lot. Still feels a bit odd to be doing this on a saturday night.
Today me and Jamie went to the biggest hill of Macao, to see how that looks like. We were quite amazed to see that the whole park is actually a public sport centre where people come to jog, play soccer or badminton, and use public fitness machines that are placed within the park. I really start to understand why the locals over here are so thin. The facilities are well used; the hill is a perfect place to work out, and get away from the busy streets at the same time. I think we found our new favorite work out place here in Macao.

Tomorrow school is really going to start. I must say that we start in style with a course called wine studies. Use some imagenation and you could figure out what we have to do in that class. The next two weeks we have to go to school every day, except for sundays. So this means even on saturdays. The 18th of february the chinese, and the whole of Asia, celebrates chinese new year. This means that schools are closed for a week, so we have a holiday again. The idea is to go travelling through China and see if it differs much from what I've seen in Macao so far. I think it does, and that the culture shock is now really about to happen. To be honoust, I really can't wait to see this, and see how far I get without speaking any chinese. With a bit of luck, we have a chinese girl coming with us. This would make things easier for us. I'm a bit worried about the food, since people told me that in the ' real China' people eat anything with four legs, except for tables and chairs. I don't really like the sound of that. I'll just wait and see what crosses my path...

Well, so far so good, I'm going to finish posting for today. I'll try to post something as soon as possible, or as soon as something remarkable happens. But for now,

thank you, bye bye

Picture time!

2007-01-30T14:57:00.000+01:00

Alright then, picture time! I selected a few pictures that I thought give an image of what I have been up to so far. And ofcourse there was london first...

No need to explain all the sightings probably. I've seen most of them, the big ben, buckingham palace, the tower bridge, the london eye and so on.

With the following Macao pictures I sort of want to show the big contrast that the city has. There are the skyscrapers, the casinos and the occasional park. Well, I think pictures tell more than words...

The last picture is from the view from my balcony. The part where I live is really the bussiest part of Macao, with lots of narrow streets and a lot of traffic. Although most buildings could use a paint job, I still think it has its charm. Macao might feel very western, It's still has an eastern twist to it that makes me like this place!

Finally in Macao!

2007-01-28T16:24:00.000+01:00

Like the title might suggest, I finally arrived in Macao! As I am typing this, it is my fourth day in this city now. Jamie and I set of for London on Tuesday from Dusselsorf. Arriving at dusseldorf I received a phone call from Jamie, telling me that we are at the wrong airport! I couldn't believe it, the right airport was still an hour away and wasn't even close to Dusseldorf! Germans...
We finally arrived on the right airport, still in time to catch the plane, and set of to London.

LONDON BABY!
London is such a cool place. Wherever you go you will find something that catches your eye. We met up with Pete, a guy I worked with on Sardinia and he showed us around. After getting the hang of the tube system (took us a bit) we saw most of the famous places on the first day, such as the big ben, westminster abby, the london eye and so on. After having some problem in the hostel in the evening, we used the second day to see the last bits we missed out on on the first day and prepared to go to China! We were flying from London Gatwick to Hong Kong international airport with OasisHongKong. After a long flight (11+ hours!) we finally landed int he far east, the first time ever! And just to sum it up; London is highly recommendable!

CHINA!
We arrived in Hong Kong at about 7:30 Holland time, which was 15:30 local time. I didn't have a real jet lag or anything, I had a hard time sleeping on the plane. Everything went really easy when we got of the plane. We picked up the tickets for the ferry at the stand of the company and they claimed our luggage for us. We took the ferry to Macao at 18:00 and arrived around 18:45. We went through customs and took a cab to the university. This also presented to first communication conflict. I found out that there are only three words the average chinese speaks in English which are ' thank you' and ' bye bye'. It is quite hard explaining where you have to be while making combinations with those three words...
Eventually we arrived at the school at about 20:00. Two students met us there to show us our new homes for the next 5.5 months. We live in a tall building, a five minute walk from the university. I can tell that this is a relief after my great experiences with the Dutch railroad company.
The appartment has all the things I need; a kitchen, living room, bathroom, balcony, television, wireless internet and a washing machine, and only 90 euros a month! Nothing can beat that in the Netherlands that's for sure.
Life is really cheap over here. I met some more exchange students over the past days, and their main advice is not to do any kooking and just eat at one of the many restaurants Macao has. Today dinner cost me 30 dollars, which is about 3 euros. And it was a complete dinner, unbelievable...
The last three days I saw a lot of macao. The city is quite compact with a lot of skyscrapers. One could walk from one side to the other in approximately an hour or a bit more. On this small piece of land live 440.000 people, which causes the streets to be packed during the day and still be busy during the night. My first impression is that Macao is a very diverse city. There is a lot of glamour going on in the Sands casino (it's so huge) and there is not so much glamour going on in the little streets and ally's surrounding our living environment. It's not really poverty that you see, it's just really busy and a bit dirty at places. The first time I really realised I was in Asia was when I visited the market for the first time. It's hilarious to see how much goods can be displayed on the streets. In most cases it's hard to find the salesmen behind everything. Crossing a street is also an adventure on its own. First of all there is the driving on the wrong side of the road thingy, which is sometimes a bit complicated, and then there is the thing with the cars and scooters that will not stop for anyone. Passing the streets means you just have to pick a point to basically throw yourself for a car that isn't driving to hard. It will make him slow down in most cases...
I still have to say that Macao has a more relaxed feel to it than the Netherlands. Sure, the streets are busy but the people are more relaxed and take it easier than where I come from. It's more south-European. I didn't expect that but I'm pleasantly surprised.
The school I will have to go to (first day tomorrow), is located on a hill in a park. Going to that place is being in a completely different place. It's really peacefull and clean, which is quite pleasant coming from the busy city streets. I'm now looking forward of going to school and meeting some new people.

Yesterday I went out with a group of exchange students and some friends of them. I can say that going out here is great fun, and really expensive. The stangest thing is that nobody is drinking in the bars or clubs, a lot of people drink a lot on forehand to avoid the high prices that are charged for a simple drink. Maybe an idea...
We arrived back at the appartment at about seven in the morning. I slept until half past four. It is now 0:43 local time which means 17:43 back in europe. It's really something different being almost on the other side of the world.

pictures will come as soon as possible! Here is a first impression...

January update

2007-01-14T18:28:00.000+01:00

Well I came back from my holiday in Bosnia last Sunday. The holiday was great in spite of a few setbacks. The biggest one was the lack of snow upon arrival. This could easily be the worst winter ever when it comes to the amount of snow in the ski centres. however, not counting the snow issues, the holiday was great. We met some old friends of my dad and my aunt and uncle from Croatia were there as well. In the end it turned out we were lucky, it started snowing! I had two days of snowboarding left, which at the moment was enough for me...

When people think of Bosnia, most will think about the war and the landmines. This is ofcourse a very logical reaction. However here are some pictures that might help in getting a better image on the country.

Not too bad is it? I can say that the mountain areas of the country are really stunning, and is definately an area I would recommend everyone to visit.

This is the holiday house of Pero, my dad's cousin.

And to end the story for today a picture of me and sister, taken on the top of the mountain when the tracks were finally opened for snowboarding and skiing.

Next: The big trip to China (9 days left, and counting). It's coming really close now and I'm really looking forward to it. The next post will probably be from Macau. I hope I can find a decent place to post and upload pictures so I can give an impression of my new living situation.

December update

2006-12-22T21:42:00.000+01:00

well, it's been a while since my first post. Let's say I had other stuff on my mind (school, holiday, poker, etc.) I've been very busy since my time in Sardinia. I had to do a lot of preparation for the 'big trip' to China. Counting down to the 23th of January! It's coming close!

Most people who will read this (if any, that is) already know by now that I will leave the Netherlands to join in an exchange program organized by my school. I will attend a university in Macao, China for about 6 months. After that Me and Jamie (my travel mate) will go wandering through China, to end up taking the vodkatrain from Beijing to St. Petersburg in Mother Russia.

But first things first, it's almost christmas now, and I will take one final holiday with my parents and other relatives to Bosnia. A snowy holiday this is; pictures will follow afterwards!

Ow yeah! I the meantime I have been to Croatia as well, this was some months ago. Here is a raw picture of the view from the balcony of our holiday house:

kick-off

2006-09-25T10:32:00.000+02:00

Hey there,

It's now 15 days since I came back from Sardinia. I worked on a campsite called 'Baia Blu La Tortuga' for approximately 2 months, from the 19th of July until the 10th of September. It was quite an interesting experience which I enjoyed. Pictures are made, but still in the process of being processed. As soon as I find time to import them from my camera I will post them here. For now I just want to leave it with this, so my blog offically has a kick-off!

The pictures:

View just next to a beach near the campsite I worked on, not bad scenery if you ask me.

A panaromic view of the campsite I worked on. On the right side the live area of my team and me is displayed.

These two pictures were made in Palau , which was quite a nice looking town, but not too sizeable, which makes it not too attractive for more thrill seeking people.

The two pictures above show Bonifacio in the south of Corsica. Of all towns I saw during my stay on Sardinia, this one was the nicest by far. It has an old town centre on top of a rock, which looks quite impressive when you just enter the town by ferry. The upper picture shows the rocks where bonifacio is built upon. The lower picture shows the harbour seen from inside the town.

These Pictures were taken in Olbia where Ewan and me attended a local football match between Olbia FC and Celano. Olbia won the game 3-0. That team is going places!

Last but not least, my tent. This is the place where I lived during the period I worked for Eurocamp.

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ps. for the music lovers amongst us, try this:

Lemmon Jelly - Rambling man
Chris Cornell - Can't change me
Gomez - How we opperate

Just some songs I am currently hooked on...