So much Dutchies!

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!

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!

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!