Chuc Mung Nam Moi! (Vietnam part 1)

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!

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!

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