Since at the hostel there is hot water only till 10am, I got up at 9 to take a shower (I was prepared even for lines at the shower room :)). First 5 minutes of the shower there was only hot water and from then on there was only cold water :) And all this you get used to as long as you can take your shower since you never know when/if/how and where you are able to shower next.
This morning when we woke up there was an unpleasant surprise - it was pouring outside :( Nevertheless we decided to go walking by the lake. We wrapped ourselves into waterproof clothes, packed, checked out of the hostel and headed out leaving bags to the hostel. There are 36 lakes in China that are named West Lake - the one in Hangzhou is the most famous one of them. We were pretty good at ignoring the rain as it was all worth it. The lake was beautiful. It is possible to take a walk around the lake and there are nice parks and walkways by the shore, walkways are very clean and windy, edged by weeping willows - just like in a fairytale picture book.
There are 3 islands on the lake. We took a boat to two of them, one smaller and the other bigger - the biggest of the 3. The biggest one has little water eyes inside it and during full moon it gets wonderful reflections on the water. During that night the locals come to the island and decorate it with candles - that must be worthy sight. From the biggest island we were taken back by the boat to the other side of the lake and from there we walked down to the hostel side again by special walkway. By that time the rain had stopped as well.
We had a wonderful dinner at the same restaurant where we ate last night as food there was delicious, it was Muslim restaurant. At first when we got to China we were wondering of how they manage to order so much food that their whole table is covered with plates - now we are mastering that already quite well. Of course the fact that all dishes are brought to the table at once and nothing is cleaned off before the people leave the table helps us a bit as well :)
After dinner we took one more walk on the wonderful crafts street. This time we shopped mostly for local sweets and candy. Now we are back at the hostel where we collected our bags. Loaded up some more photos and sat in a free wireless for 1,5 hours :) No idea when will the next opportunity come to visit the worldwideweb :) But now - to the train station, our train to Wenzhou leaves in 2,5 hours.
All the best to all of you!!!
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
day 14 - welcome Hangzhou - 30.08
Our packing, breakfast and check-out in Shanghai went as planned. Train ride to Hangzhou was about 1,5 hours and the train was quite fancy, even much nicer than the one we took from Beijing to Qingdao. Once we arrived in Hangzhou the first thing we tried to arrange was train tickets to Xiamen via Wenzhou. Well we got the tickets to Wenzhou just fine (leaving tomorrow, Sunday, evening at 21:41 and ride is about 8 hours), but from there on we were out of luck. Apparently there is no train traffic from Wenzhou to Xiamen. This is quite hard to believe as there are trains going everywhere :) Well, but it has to be possible to get from there to Xiamen somehow. We also tried to find out about the travels to Xiamen in advance from Hangzhou - just to be sure that we won't be stuck there, but nobody was able to help. They could not even make a phone call for us to see how could we possibly get to Xiamen from our next destination. Oh well - we will see once we are there, what is the worst that can happen :D ?!
So but Hangzhou seems very nice at the first glance. We arrived at the local youth hostel and found this place to be packed, ended up getting 2 beds in a dormitory room again - this time we were squeezed into a room with 2 old guys :( But since this is a budget place and we need to sleep here only 1 night we figured that we will just try to manage somehow. Then took a wonderful walk in the town, found a crafts and gifts street and went crazy with shopping :-P There were so many so nice things that we could not resist. I tried to remind myself once in a while that i need to carry all this stuff on my back for the next month - it helped a bit :)
Now we are back at the hostel, and guess what :) :) we got free wireless here!!!! Now we can do all our CS'ing and looking up hostels and review travel options and get a flight to Vietnam and all this - weheee!
Tomorrow we are planning on walking around by the lake, perhaps go to some parks and find other sightseeing places here in town. Then probably a nice dinner and then to the train station.
Time is absolutely flying by - tomorrow it will be 2 weeks from our departure from Tallinn.
So but Hangzhou seems very nice at the first glance. We arrived at the local youth hostel and found this place to be packed, ended up getting 2 beds in a dormitory room again - this time we were squeezed into a room with 2 old guys :( But since this is a budget place and we need to sleep here only 1 night we figured that we will just try to manage somehow. Then took a wonderful walk in the town, found a crafts and gifts street and went crazy with shopping :-P There were so many so nice things that we could not resist. I tried to remind myself once in a while that i need to carry all this stuff on my back for the next month - it helped a bit :)
Now we are back at the hostel, and guess what :) :) we got free wireless here!!!! Now we can do all our CS'ing and looking up hostels and review travel options and get a flight to Vietnam and all this - weheee!
Tomorrow we are planning on walking around by the lake, perhaps go to some parks and find other sightseeing places here in town. Then probably a nice dinner and then to the train station.
Time is absolutely flying by - tomorrow it will be 2 weeks from our departure from Tallinn.
Friday, August 29, 2008
day 13 - saying goodbyes to Shanghai - 29.08
waaa - i don't wanna leave :) Shanghai is wonderful, it is beautiful and it is convenient and it is exciting and it is pretty and did i say it is wonderful? We went to Cloud 9 this evening (just got back from there) in Jinmao Tower - WOOOOW. This lounge was on the 87th floor, had to take 3 different elevators to get there :) The very last floor, 88th is a viewing platform, but the access there is very expensive, so we just ordered a drink at the lounge for that money. It was amazing, all those other really tall and big buildings were like matchboxes looking from the tower. We got great table with a view to the Bund - amazing. Had 2 very tasty cocktails up there and just enjoyed the view - made us both speechless.
On our way back we had a last look at the city panorama and we said our goodbyes. Tomorrow morning we pack, eat a nice breakfast and then to the train station. We were joking with Riina, that once we start walking around in the city without a map it is time to leave as we have gotten too familiar with the city already. It has happened to Shanghai today :D
Shanghai was fabulous.
On our way back we had a last look at the city panorama and we said our goodbyes. Tomorrow morning we pack, eat a nice breakfast and then to the train station. We were joking with Riina, that once we start walking around in the city without a map it is time to leave as we have gotten too familiar with the city already. It has happened to Shanghai today :D
Shanghai was fabulous.
day 13 - last day in Shanghai - 29.08
Last night we met with another person from CS, local girl Ping. She took us out to eat to the promised Italian restaurant - food was delicious and this place even had desert! We got some cakes :) It was great. We also got whole lot of new information about Chinese culture and ways. She talked quite openly about marriage and family planning for an example as well and Chinese spirituality and connection to religion. Meeting locals adds so much more value to the trip - thank you CS :)
This morning our first trip was to the train station - we bought our train tickets to Hangzhou, train leaves tomorrow at 1pm. Most likely we will spend 1,5 days there. By the tourist guide this is suppose to be the most beautiful city in China - we'll see, famous attraction in town being the legendary West Lake. Population of the town (or rather city) is marked 6.16 million, most likely this number would vary by +1/2 million. Population of Shanghai is marked as 15 million and local girl thought it is more like 19 million in reality - sounds reasonable.
During lunch time we wondered around by the skyscrapers across from the river, by Jinmao Tower and other tall buildings like the funny TV tower with round red bubbles. Later in the evening when it gets darker, we will try to visit Cloud 9 bar that is located on the 87th floor of Jinmao Tower. This is the tallest building in China - 420.5m :)
We also stopped by at China Sex Culture Museum, it ended up being just one exhibition by the tourist tunnel. Now we are hiding from pouring rain in Starbucks Coffee place on the wrong side of the river :) I guess no Bund walk for us today as it is totally pouring outside. Too bad there is no internet, then we would have something to do at least while just sitting around in here. There is suppose to be internet in every Starbucks Coffee but in reality it is not so, even the people who work here were helpless in this regard. So we were taking thousand and one pictures of the rain through the window :)
Later we ran over to the shopping mall across the road in hope for internet there. Shopping mall is 9 stories of shops and each level is probably as big as whole Kaubamaja :D And guess what - there is no internet in the whole area, crazy huh :) Oh and on our way to the shopping mall we got soaked of course. Later we made our way to the hostel, got changed, went out for a small portion of the Bund walk and then headed over to the small streets in search of fried dumplings. After about 30 minutes of searching we found one place - oh boy were those good! This dinner was under 15 EEK for us :) and we were so full afterwards that we could barely walk.
This morning our first trip was to the train station - we bought our train tickets to Hangzhou, train leaves tomorrow at 1pm. Most likely we will spend 1,5 days there. By the tourist guide this is suppose to be the most beautiful city in China - we'll see, famous attraction in town being the legendary West Lake. Population of the town (or rather city) is marked 6.16 million, most likely this number would vary by +1/2 million. Population of Shanghai is marked as 15 million and local girl thought it is more like 19 million in reality - sounds reasonable.
During lunch time we wondered around by the skyscrapers across from the river, by Jinmao Tower and other tall buildings like the funny TV tower with round red bubbles. Later in the evening when it gets darker, we will try to visit Cloud 9 bar that is located on the 87th floor of Jinmao Tower. This is the tallest building in China - 420.5m :)
We also stopped by at China Sex Culture Museum, it ended up being just one exhibition by the tourist tunnel. Now we are hiding from pouring rain in Starbucks Coffee place on the wrong side of the river :) I guess no Bund walk for us today as it is totally pouring outside. Too bad there is no internet, then we would have something to do at least while just sitting around in here. There is suppose to be internet in every Starbucks Coffee but in reality it is not so, even the people who work here were helpless in this regard. So we were taking thousand and one pictures of the rain through the window :)
Later we ran over to the shopping mall across the road in hope for internet there. Shopping mall is 9 stories of shops and each level is probably as big as whole Kaubamaja :D And guess what - there is no internet in the whole area, crazy huh :) Oh and on our way to the shopping mall we got soaked of course. Later we made our way to the hostel, got changed, went out for a small portion of the Bund walk and then headed over to the small streets in search of fried dumplings. After about 30 minutes of searching we found one place - oh boy were those good! This dinner was under 15 EEK for us :) and we were so full afterwards that we could barely walk.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
day 12 - general notes about china vol.1
I already mentioned that there are TV's in public transportation here - this is so convenient. Think about going to work in the morning and watching the morning news while sitting in traffic :) perfect huh :)
Wanted to talk about Chinese language as well. It was Kenny who explained it to us of how it works, he has studied it intensively for 2 months and speaks it to some level now. So first there are the chinese characters, each character can be translated to latin syllables - this is how we can understand and comprehend the language. Then there are 4 tones for speaking each syllable which means that each syllable can be said in 4 ways and each way you say has a different meaning :) Fun huh :)
There are wonderful snacks available here. First great snack we found was dried kiwi fruit. It is peeled and nicely sliced up, each slice is dried and packaged on its own in a little bag, yummi stuff. Then we found dried bananas - nothing special, just like we have it at home. Next we found some interesting orange round things. We opened the package up and at some, they were sugary and chewy, tasted very good - but we have no idea what it is :) We are guessing this is dried sweetened carrot, but this is just a guess. Then last night walking to the store we were caught by one guy who was selling nut cake :) It was about 20cm in height and perhaps a bit under 1m each side forming this huge cake type thing. We got a little slice of it, which ended up being quite pricey as the price came with weight. Anyhoo, but the cake consisted of chopped up nuts and something sweet and sticky, maybe condensed milk or something like that. The whole thing formed quite a solid mass, perhaps there are also some fruits or something else mixed in there - no idea, it tastes wonderful though.
About crime - as Kenny told us, it is quite safe in China. Penalties for small theft are very harsh and the prisons are probably worst in the world so there is not much crime around - just as Mart guessed.
When i asked about the movie theaters and how popular they are, then the local girl looked at me kinda funny and said that it is so much easier to grab a pirated copy from the street :) So that is what we did this evening - grabbed to movies from the street sellers, in English of course, total 16CNY. Movie tickets are between 30 and 80CNY depending on a movie :)
Wanted to talk about Chinese language as well. It was Kenny who explained it to us of how it works, he has studied it intensively for 2 months and speaks it to some level now. So first there are the chinese characters, each character can be translated to latin syllables - this is how we can understand and comprehend the language. Then there are 4 tones for speaking each syllable which means that each syllable can be said in 4 ways and each way you say has a different meaning :) Fun huh :)
There are wonderful snacks available here. First great snack we found was dried kiwi fruit. It is peeled and nicely sliced up, each slice is dried and packaged on its own in a little bag, yummi stuff. Then we found dried bananas - nothing special, just like we have it at home. Next we found some interesting orange round things. We opened the package up and at some, they were sugary and chewy, tasted very good - but we have no idea what it is :) We are guessing this is dried sweetened carrot, but this is just a guess. Then last night walking to the store we were caught by one guy who was selling nut cake :) It was about 20cm in height and perhaps a bit under 1m each side forming this huge cake type thing. We got a little slice of it, which ended up being quite pricey as the price came with weight. Anyhoo, but the cake consisted of chopped up nuts and something sweet and sticky, maybe condensed milk or something like that. The whole thing formed quite a solid mass, perhaps there are also some fruits or something else mixed in there - no idea, it tastes wonderful though.
About crime - as Kenny told us, it is quite safe in China. Penalties for small theft are very harsh and the prisons are probably worst in the world so there is not much crime around - just as Mart guessed.
When i asked about the movie theaters and how popular they are, then the local girl looked at me kinda funny and said that it is so much easier to grab a pirated copy from the street :) So that is what we did this evening - grabbed to movies from the street sellers, in English of course, total 16CNY. Movie tickets are between 30 and 80CNY depending on a movie :)
day 12 - Shanghai zoo - 28.08
In the morning we accidentally slept till 10:30, well actually we just decided that we won't set an alarm since there are 4 other people in the room and most likely we won't be able to get much sleep anyways. Well, we slept like babies :D Shower - noodle soup for breakfast and then to the zoo. For this we walked to the Peoples Square and looked for our bus stop - that took us ages. Peoples Square is this huuuge park and there must be at least 10 bus stop areas here, from each bus stop there are about 10 buses leaving. Finally we found the correct one. Bus ride to the zoo was 40 minutes as it is quite a bit off the center.
Zoo was nice, nothing too special but nice anyways. For better overview check the photos.
Now I understand why Kenny told us yesterday that there is nothing touristy to see in Shanghai - because all there is is mediocre and elsewhere it is much better and nicer. But oh well - we are fine with mediocre sights as well, it is still Shanghai :) And to say the least - Shanghai is great :) It is definitely the highlight of our travels so far. It has great architecture and skyscrapers, it has nice parks, it is cleaner than the other cities we have seen so far in China, it has more this big city feeling than Beijing, people speak a bit of English even so the communication is a bit better and so on and so on :D Me likes it here :D It was told us that Shanghai is only good for 3 things - shopping, eating in nice restaurants and partying. Last night we were at a foreign like restaurant and we both had a burger, this evening we should be taken to Italian restaurant Chinese way. Lets see what this will be like.
Future plans - leave to Hangzhou sometime on Saturday, will get train tickets tomorrow so will let you know then.
Zoo was nice, nothing too special but nice anyways. For better overview check the photos.
Now I understand why Kenny told us yesterday that there is nothing touristy to see in Shanghai - because all there is is mediocre and elsewhere it is much better and nicer. But oh well - we are fine with mediocre sights as well, it is still Shanghai :) And to say the least - Shanghai is great :) It is definitely the highlight of our travels so far. It has great architecture and skyscrapers, it has nice parks, it is cleaner than the other cities we have seen so far in China, it has more this big city feeling than Beijing, people speak a bit of English even so the communication is a bit better and so on and so on :D Me likes it here :D It was told us that Shanghai is only good for 3 things - shopping, eating in nice restaurants and partying. Last night we were at a foreign like restaurant and we both had a burger, this evening we should be taken to Italian restaurant Chinese way. Lets see what this will be like.
Future plans - leave to Hangzhou sometime on Saturday, will get train tickets tomorrow so will let you know then.
day 11 - Shanghai Museum and Maglev ride - 27.08
First touristy thing we figured to explore was Shanghai Museum. It gave an overview of the Chinese culture by displaying ancient art forms of pottery, sculpture, metal works, furniture, lettter seals, coins, paintings and calligraphy. Museum was located at a nice central location so all good - got some nice walk in as well.
Second attraction of the day was Maglev ride :D OhoOOOO that was COOL!!! We happened to get there at the time when it was going on maximum speed of 430-431 km/h :D Yeah, we got a round ticket so we got to do it twice! It was wonderful. Things were going by so quickly that it was like fast forwarding life :D
Finally we are seeing some Starbucks coffees around here and I checked with my phone for wifi - it was there :D YAY since the internet at the hostel is very expensive. Hostel is otherwise nice, we booked 2 beds in a 7 person room. All seems clean and fine so far. Showers and toilets are at the other end of the hallway and there is even a possibility to do laundry - which we are using already :D Tomorrow we will have some clean shirts!
For dinner we met up with Kenny from CS. He is living in Shanghai for another 3 weeks because of work, he has been here for 5 months already. It is always so fascinating to hear things from locals - or at least from people who have lived here for a while. I could have easily carried on our discussion for hours and hours, but it was getting late and we have had a long day today so it was time to get back. We did enjoy a short walk by the river and watched the lit up skyscrapers from both sides of the river - so nice, big cities are incredible. Kenny was telling us of how they turn off the lights around 11 at night in order to save energy as there are huge energy shortages in Shanghai, but apparently the ordered commercials must still stay as those have been paid for. He also gave us great hints on what to see and how to get the most out of Shanghai, also some tips on travelling.
We will stay in Shanghai at least till Saturday evening if not till Sunday evening. We have been pondering about how to make it to Hong Kong - the cheapest is to take a train, but train ride is 25 hours :(( I don't think I'm able to take that. At the hostel, in our room, one of the girls is from Hong Kong so she was gladly giving out information about getting there. Tomorrow we are meeting with a local girl for dinner, also from CS, so hopefully we will get more ideas on how to move on to Hong Kong from here. Will see, maybe there is a way to break the 25h trip to smaller chunks - if not, then gotta survive the 25h train ride somehow.
Tomorrow we are planning on going to Shanghai Zoo. Now I need to go and get the laundry and then to bed :)
Second attraction of the day was Maglev ride :D OhoOOOO that was COOL!!! We happened to get there at the time when it was going on maximum speed of 430-431 km/h :D Yeah, we got a round ticket so we got to do it twice! It was wonderful. Things were going by so quickly that it was like fast forwarding life :D
Finally we are seeing some Starbucks coffees around here and I checked with my phone for wifi - it was there :D YAY since the internet at the hostel is very expensive. Hostel is otherwise nice, we booked 2 beds in a 7 person room. All seems clean and fine so far. Showers and toilets are at the other end of the hallway and there is even a possibility to do laundry - which we are using already :D Tomorrow we will have some clean shirts!
For dinner we met up with Kenny from CS. He is living in Shanghai for another 3 weeks because of work, he has been here for 5 months already. It is always so fascinating to hear things from locals - or at least from people who have lived here for a while. I could have easily carried on our discussion for hours and hours, but it was getting late and we have had a long day today so it was time to get back. We did enjoy a short walk by the river and watched the lit up skyscrapers from both sides of the river - so nice, big cities are incredible. Kenny was telling us of how they turn off the lights around 11 at night in order to save energy as there are huge energy shortages in Shanghai, but apparently the ordered commercials must still stay as those have been paid for. He also gave us great hints on what to see and how to get the most out of Shanghai, also some tips on travelling.
We will stay in Shanghai at least till Saturday evening if not till Sunday evening. We have been pondering about how to make it to Hong Kong - the cheapest is to take a train, but train ride is 25 hours :(( I don't think I'm able to take that. At the hostel, in our room, one of the girls is from Hong Kong so she was gladly giving out information about getting there. Tomorrow we are meeting with a local girl for dinner, also from CS, so hopefully we will get more ideas on how to move on to Hong Kong from here. Will see, maybe there is a way to break the 25h trip to smaller chunks - if not, then gotta survive the 25h train ride somehow.
Tomorrow we are planning on going to Shanghai Zoo. Now I need to go and get the laundry and then to bed :)
day 11 - arrival to Shanghai - 27.08
Train ride to Shanghai was not as bad as we thought. As it was night train then we got sleeping beds. There were 3 levels of them, I got the bottom one which was 7CNY more expensive than the middle one that Riina had. Third level bed was the cheapest. One little aisle had 3 beds on each side so 6 total. Each bed had a sheet, a pillow and a blanket - so all nice and comfortable for a good nights sleep. Train left the station at 21:53, lights were turned off at around 23:00, wake up call took place at 5:20 and train arrived in Shanghai at 6 in the morning. I got about 5 hours of good sleep :) and my mp3 player worked mostly like a charm :)
There was a mixup with our hostel bookings and the address that was given to us. Getting to the hotel was an experience on its own as we had decided to take the bus this time. One great thing that we have noticed about chinese is the way they help foreigners. Yes - notice how I say foreigners, as Kenny (one CS'r we met tonight) explained us then Chinese are representing their country when communicating with other cultures so they are very polite and helpful - same does not apply of how they treat each other. Anyhoo this one lady walked us to a bus station so that we would catch a correct bus, at the bus station she found a person who was travelling to the same area that we had to go to and then made it his duty that we would get where we needed to :) After a long walk we surely did make it :)
Once at the hostel we left our bags there as it was too early for check-in, took a shower there and then headed to town.
There was a mixup with our hostel bookings and the address that was given to us. Getting to the hotel was an experience on its own as we had decided to take the bus this time. One great thing that we have noticed about chinese is the way they help foreigners. Yes - notice how I say foreigners, as Kenny (one CS'r we met tonight) explained us then Chinese are representing their country when communicating with other cultures so they are very polite and helpful - same does not apply of how they treat each other. Anyhoo this one lady walked us to a bus station so that we would catch a correct bus, at the bus station she found a person who was travelling to the same area that we had to go to and then made it his duty that we would get where we needed to :) After a long walk we surely did make it :)
Once at the hostel we left our bags there as it was too early for check-in, took a shower there and then headed to town.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
day 10 - Tai'an - 26.8
One of the slow days again :) Got up at 10, packed all our bags and checked out of the hostel. We were able to leave our big back bags at the hostel, we'll pick them up before heading to the train station. Next night we will spend in a train to Shanghai. I hope the train is something similar to the one we took from Beijing, so that we can at least stretch our legs a bit - but we will see.
The constant packing is doing some good to both of us, every time we pack we have more room left over :) Now we have also gathered some food for our train ride and longer trips away from town, just as my mom suggested before I left :D In the trains there is an attendant who comes by about once in 2 hours with boiling water, so that we can make noodles or soup or any food where you just pour boiling water on.
Today we are trying to pass the day by in this small place where there is nothing to do at all. So far we explored the 4 level shopping mall. It was nice and cool in there and I bought myself an MP3 player so that I can listen to music on those long train rides. Coming out of the shopping place 45 minutes later all the streets were drowndes with water - apparently it had been raining havily while we were in there :) well that was quick :) When we stepped outside it was sunny again. Although it felt about 3 times hotter than in the morning. I'm so used to that the rain makes the air cooler, but here it works the other way around as it seems like :( Now we are hiding in the dark internet cafe, will be probably about 2 hour session - loading pictures, reading mail and posting to the blog. It is a bit better and cooler in here as well. Don't wanna go outside if we really don't have to, it just drains all the energy and walking in such heat is difficult - you learn to walk very very slowly :)
Our train leaves 21:53, so we will probably go to one of the couzy coffee place now to chill a bit, then eat something and then chill some more and then around 8 or so head over to the train station to be stuck in a train for 8 hours. Slow days are good too :)
Oh, I just have to tell about how everyone is staring at us. I feel like a zoo animal :) When we walk on the street then people stop to stare at us. When we pass a street shop or something then if one notices us then he/she will invite all the people from inside to look as well. When one person walking notices us then he/she would elbow the person next to him/her and they both stop and stare until we pass. At first it was kinda funny, but now it is really getting annoying. They would even stop in the middle of the street, it seems they don't even mind getting run over by car - as long as they get to stare at us. So far I have only met 5 other white people in this town - 3 of them were at the mountain and 2 at the Dai temple. So yes we whites are rare around here apparently and they don't seem to get tried of staring at us.
Oh, story about the screaming crickets was about to be forgotten. There is always some loud screetching noice around us whenever there are some trees and grass around. Well yesterday at the mountain one local guy told us that those bugs would be born and would live 3 years on the ground (or was it under the ground, could not fully understand) without being able to do the noise and then they have only 3 months to "sing" and then they would die :( So for this 3 months they apparently scream from the top of their little lungs - and they are very loud. Later in the evening we saw those bugs in small boxes at the market as well, those were just huge crickets.
The constant packing is doing some good to both of us, every time we pack we have more room left over :) Now we have also gathered some food for our train ride and longer trips away from town, just as my mom suggested before I left :D In the trains there is an attendant who comes by about once in 2 hours with boiling water, so that we can make noodles or soup or any food where you just pour boiling water on.
Today we are trying to pass the day by in this small place where there is nothing to do at all. So far we explored the 4 level shopping mall. It was nice and cool in there and I bought myself an MP3 player so that I can listen to music on those long train rides. Coming out of the shopping place 45 minutes later all the streets were drowndes with water - apparently it had been raining havily while we were in there :) well that was quick :) When we stepped outside it was sunny again. Although it felt about 3 times hotter than in the morning. I'm so used to that the rain makes the air cooler, but here it works the other way around as it seems like :( Now we are hiding in the dark internet cafe, will be probably about 2 hour session - loading pictures, reading mail and posting to the blog. It is a bit better and cooler in here as well. Don't wanna go outside if we really don't have to, it just drains all the energy and walking in such heat is difficult - you learn to walk very very slowly :)
Our train leaves 21:53, so we will probably go to one of the couzy coffee place now to chill a bit, then eat something and then chill some more and then around 8 or so head over to the train station to be stuck in a train for 8 hours. Slow days are good too :)
Oh, I just have to tell about how everyone is staring at us. I feel like a zoo animal :) When we walk on the street then people stop to stare at us. When we pass a street shop or something then if one notices us then he/she will invite all the people from inside to look as well. When one person walking notices us then he/she would elbow the person next to him/her and they both stop and stare until we pass. At first it was kinda funny, but now it is really getting annoying. They would even stop in the middle of the street, it seems they don't even mind getting run over by car - as long as they get to stare at us. So far I have only met 5 other white people in this town - 3 of them were at the mountain and 2 at the Dai temple. So yes we whites are rare around here apparently and they don't seem to get tried of staring at us.
Oh, story about the screaming crickets was about to be forgotten. There is always some loud screetching noice around us whenever there are some trees and grass around. Well yesterday at the mountain one local guy told us that those bugs would be born and would live 3 years on the ground (or was it under the ground, could not fully understand) without being able to do the noise and then they have only 3 months to "sing" and then they would die :( So for this 3 months they apparently scream from the top of their little lungs - and they are very loud. Later in the evening we saw those bugs in small boxes at the market as well, those were just huge crickets.
day 9 - Tai Shan mountain - 25.08
Headed out of the hotel early in the morning as we assumed that we will use up all the promised 8 hours at the mountain. There are various ways to get up there and also to come down. As we found out later then going up and coming down only by foot would take 8 hours as there are some 6660 stairs to climb :) Riina was not so happy about the stairs as she got her share at the Great Wall :)
Anyhoo, we grabbed a taxi by the hotel and showed the signs of Tianwai Village to the taxi driver (that is how it works, all the signs of places are given in chinese in the travel guide so that is the best way of clear communication) as that is where the buses would depart from. Communication with them is interesting - they have the strangest signs for numbers. When they corss 2 index fingers then this is 10 and when they lift the thumb and index finger then this is 8, other numbers we have not figured out yet :) Well 1 is easy as well, that is just an index finger. Apparently those finger combinations somehow represent their signs when writing numbers, although most of the phone numbers don't use the hieroglyphs but are written in regular latin numbers.
From Tianwai village we were able to purhase our pass up the mountain as well. Somehow they also smuggled local insurance for us, well that is comforting :) Bus took us halfway up through a windy road. From halfway up we climbed some stairs for 2 hours - that was rough. The air was a bit cooler up here, but the sun was blazing down at us and climbing up was not an easy task either so all together we were burning up in any possible way. And, no we did not need our fleece jackets that we dragged up there - we were dying of heat no matter what.
Up on the summit there were numerous temples, hotels, shops, restaruants, cliffs and some what looked like army buildings. We spent about 2 hours walking around up there enjoying the amazing views and beautiful scenery. During that 2 hours we noticed our red shoulders which reminded me that i forgot to put sunscreen on :(, I applied it on the last moment, but we both ended up getting burned in our face, shoulders and upper back - oh the night will be painful.
For the downward journey we decided to take the cable car from the summit to half way down and then walk the rest. Cable car experience was great :) At first I wasn't so sure about taking the cable car, but I'm very glad we did. Claustrophobic as I am it was a bit scary, but then again it was twice the excitement. About 5 people would fit into the single car thingy, it had seats on two sides. Whole thing was made of glass and had small windows on top - to let some air in. The ride was very smooth and lasted about 10 minutes. The view, well, no words to describe that. Rest of the way we walked down the stairs happily, made it back to town around 5pm.
For dinner we ended up walking out of 3 eating places. First eating place would serve only hotpot food which meant that they bring a huge bowl with broth and whatever you ordered would be boiled in front of you in that broth and they you would fish it out with chopsticks and eat it - somehow that did not look very appertising and we ended up leaving to find a bit better place. In the second eating place we could not understand anything from the menu and the waitress was not able the explain the food in any way so we just left. Third place smelled so bad that it took our breath away and we were not able to stay in there for longer than 30 seconds. Finally we went to some tiny eating place and ended up getting one of the best meals yet. We got white rice, steamed vegetables (yeap, this first time for us to have water soaked chinese cabbage things) and then meat pieces fried with onion. The meat dish was delicious! It had the best sauce ever - we ate every single piece on that plate, it had garlic and ginger there as well for taste. Sauce seemed to be terriaky sauce, well, it was the tastiest thing yet.
Evening was another movie night. Around 10 in the evening we witnessed rain for the first time here. Last time when it rained in Beijing then we were sleeping - we just heard it but never saw it. Last night we ran over to the hostel entrance to look at it - it was juust pouring. I could not imagine getting stuck with our pack bags in something like that while walking. I think it would come down so hard that we could not stand up :) It passed quite quickly though, rained perhaps for about 30 minutes or so and then that was it.
Anyhoo, we grabbed a taxi by the hotel and showed the signs of Tianwai Village to the taxi driver (that is how it works, all the signs of places are given in chinese in the travel guide so that is the best way of clear communication) as that is where the buses would depart from. Communication with them is interesting - they have the strangest signs for numbers. When they corss 2 index fingers then this is 10 and when they lift the thumb and index finger then this is 8, other numbers we have not figured out yet :) Well 1 is easy as well, that is just an index finger. Apparently those finger combinations somehow represent their signs when writing numbers, although most of the phone numbers don't use the hieroglyphs but are written in regular latin numbers.
From Tianwai village we were able to purhase our pass up the mountain as well. Somehow they also smuggled local insurance for us, well that is comforting :) Bus took us halfway up through a windy road. From halfway up we climbed some stairs for 2 hours - that was rough. The air was a bit cooler up here, but the sun was blazing down at us and climbing up was not an easy task either so all together we were burning up in any possible way. And, no we did not need our fleece jackets that we dragged up there - we were dying of heat no matter what.
Up on the summit there were numerous temples, hotels, shops, restaruants, cliffs and some what looked like army buildings. We spent about 2 hours walking around up there enjoying the amazing views and beautiful scenery. During that 2 hours we noticed our red shoulders which reminded me that i forgot to put sunscreen on :(, I applied it on the last moment, but we both ended up getting burned in our face, shoulders and upper back - oh the night will be painful.
For the downward journey we decided to take the cable car from the summit to half way down and then walk the rest. Cable car experience was great :) At first I wasn't so sure about taking the cable car, but I'm very glad we did. Claustrophobic as I am it was a bit scary, but then again it was twice the excitement. About 5 people would fit into the single car thingy, it had seats on two sides. Whole thing was made of glass and had small windows on top - to let some air in. The ride was very smooth and lasted about 10 minutes. The view, well, no words to describe that. Rest of the way we walked down the stairs happily, made it back to town around 5pm.
For dinner we ended up walking out of 3 eating places. First eating place would serve only hotpot food which meant that they bring a huge bowl with broth and whatever you ordered would be boiled in front of you in that broth and they you would fish it out with chopsticks and eat it - somehow that did not look very appertising and we ended up leaving to find a bit better place. In the second eating place we could not understand anything from the menu and the waitress was not able the explain the food in any way so we just left. Third place smelled so bad that it took our breath away and we were not able to stay in there for longer than 30 seconds. Finally we went to some tiny eating place and ended up getting one of the best meals yet. We got white rice, steamed vegetables (yeap, this first time for us to have water soaked chinese cabbage things) and then meat pieces fried with onion. The meat dish was delicious! It had the best sauce ever - we ate every single piece on that plate, it had garlic and ginger there as well for taste. Sauce seemed to be terriaky sauce, well, it was the tastiest thing yet.
Evening was another movie night. Around 10 in the evening we witnessed rain for the first time here. Last time when it rained in Beijing then we were sleeping - we just heard it but never saw it. Last night we ran over to the hostel entrance to look at it - it was juust pouring. I could not imagine getting stuck with our pack bags in something like that while walking. I think it would come down so hard that we could not stand up :) It passed quite quickly though, rained perhaps for about 30 minutes or so and then that was it.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
day 8 - Tai'an - 24.08
Yesterday we ended up just walking around in Qingdao, just took it easy. Went and tried the Yellow Sea water on beach number 1, ate some strange fried sea animal (kalmaar) and had a nice dinner.
This morning took a train to Tai'an. It was 5 hour train ride. This train was a bit more old school one than the last one. It was overly crowded and we were sitting in a 3 seater and other 3 people were facing us, there was a table under the window in between us. We were willing to do pretty much anything so that the people around us would not snort and make their horrible noises as this would have surely made us sick to our stomach. Luckily the people in our area were quite civilized :)
At the train station we got a ticket to Shanghai for the 26th of August. Train will leave at 21:53 and arrive to Shanghai at 6am. While trying to figure out where to go from there we were attacked by whole bunch of locals who were trying to sell some tour to us and at the same time help us somehow. That is the strangest thing here - they all try so hard to help us but they can't understand us and we can't understand them, but they go out of their way to help us however possible. Whatta nice people.
For the hostel we just picked one youth hostel from the travel guide and got a taxi that took us there. Tai'an is a "small" city - about 800 000 people :) For reference Qingdao was 1.6 million and Beijing 15 million in population. Shanghai will be 15 million as well. Tai'an is so called gateway to a mountain called Tai Shan mountain - it is most revered of China's five sacred Taoist peaks, with imperial sacrifices to heaven and earth offered from its summit. That is what we have planned for tomorrow :) Tai Shan is 1545m above sea level and the climbing distance will be 7.5km
Today we already managed to visit one of the temples here named Dai Temple. It was located so conveniently across from our hostel as well :) Now we will find a place to have dinner and then will cruize around some more. Tomorrow to the mountain early in the morning as they say it all should be doable in 8 hours. Finally we will have some use for the hiking shoes and fleece jackets - maybe?
There was a question about the cleanliness - well not so good with that. All the streets smell badly, like in Thailand. At times it is unbearable and you end up holding your breath :) The smells are everywhere - on the regular streets, at the markets, on the trains, in the hallways, in the temples, in the taxis.. just everywhere. And everything is moldy (hallitanud) and damp. Yes the smells are quite horrible everywhere :(
This morning took a train to Tai'an. It was 5 hour train ride. This train was a bit more old school one than the last one. It was overly crowded and we were sitting in a 3 seater and other 3 people were facing us, there was a table under the window in between us. We were willing to do pretty much anything so that the people around us would not snort and make their horrible noises as this would have surely made us sick to our stomach. Luckily the people in our area were quite civilized :)
At the train station we got a ticket to Shanghai for the 26th of August. Train will leave at 21:53 and arrive to Shanghai at 6am. While trying to figure out where to go from there we were attacked by whole bunch of locals who were trying to sell some tour to us and at the same time help us somehow. That is the strangest thing here - they all try so hard to help us but they can't understand us and we can't understand them, but they go out of their way to help us however possible. Whatta nice people.
For the hostel we just picked one youth hostel from the travel guide and got a taxi that took us there. Tai'an is a "small" city - about 800 000 people :) For reference Qingdao was 1.6 million and Beijing 15 million in population. Shanghai will be 15 million as well. Tai'an is so called gateway to a mountain called Tai Shan mountain - it is most revered of China's five sacred Taoist peaks, with imperial sacrifices to heaven and earth offered from its summit. That is what we have planned for tomorrow :) Tai Shan is 1545m above sea level and the climbing distance will be 7.5km
Today we already managed to visit one of the temples here named Dai Temple. It was located so conveniently across from our hostel as well :) Now we will find a place to have dinner and then will cruize around some more. Tomorrow to the mountain early in the morning as they say it all should be doable in 8 hours. Finally we will have some use for the hiking shoes and fleece jackets - maybe?
There was a question about the cleanliness - well not so good with that. All the streets smell badly, like in Thailand. At times it is unbearable and you end up holding your breath :) The smells are everywhere - on the regular streets, at the markets, on the trains, in the hallways, in the temples, in the taxis.. just everywhere. And everything is moldy (hallitanud) and damp. Yes the smells are quite horrible everywhere :(
Saturday, August 23, 2008
day 7 - Qingdao - 23.08
This morning we slept till noon :D Oh that was niiice! Had breakfast in bed :) and took a shower in the smelly and full on fungus cellar. Then headed out after 2pm :D Slow mornings are nice. Apparently yesterdays weather was exception as today it is deadly hot again :( The sun is out and no wind anywhere to be found.
We found probably the only internet cafe in town :) and are struggling now with the Chinese Windows and broken keyboards. Our plan now is to go to the train station to arrange the train tickets for tomorrow and then perhaps go to some temple or something in town. Yesterday we contacted with one Couch Surfing person, so perhaps we will get together with him - he lives here in Qingdao.
But allright, not much more to tell at the moment.
Greetings and hugs to all of you!
We found probably the only internet cafe in town :) and are struggling now with the Chinese Windows and broken keyboards. Our plan now is to go to the train station to arrange the train tickets for tomorrow and then perhaps go to some temple or something in town. Yesterday we contacted with one Couch Surfing person, so perhaps we will get together with him - he lives here in Qingdao.
But allright, not much more to tell at the moment.
Greetings and hugs to all of you!
day 6 - Qingdao - 22.08
Our search for a cheaper accomodation was very successful :) Both of the youth hostels listed in the travel guide were nicely available. One of them was quite awful and dirty, but cheap - 18CNY for one bed in a room with 6 beds. The other one was much nicer and the whole 4 story building was full of foreigners :) Room for two with bathroom was 180CNY. Muuuch better than our very expensive and not so clean smelly hotel. By the second youth hostel we ended up finding another hostel, it was just around the corner, rooms were quite clean and nice and price was good for us as well - 60CNY a night. Yay :) Weather was nice, very windy and a bit cooler than usual (maybe around 20C). So we walked around the town a bit, went to the seaside and wondered in the parks. Locals exercise in the parks :) They just walk in and start doing squats and stretches, all of them in their regular clothes (women in their skirts) and then later they just walk on. Other locals gther around tables and play cards. This we have seen everywhere - they must be bored a lot or something.
Throughout the whole day we would hear some sort of bangs, sometimes in the distance and other times closer to us. They would come and go randomly. For the longest time we could not figure out what that was - sounded like shooting. In the evening we witnessed one of those "shootings" quite close up, my eardrums were gonna fall off - it was firecrackers (i'm not sure if this is the right term, but it is something you put on the ground and then fire it up and it starts making shooting noise and there is lots of smoke around it). Later when it got darker then real fireworks started - all over the city. Must find out what the celebrations were for.
During lunchtime we moved our bags to the chosen hostel and checked-in. I'm already getting used to the fact that everything must be explained with hands and making random arrows on the paper :) All gets done and clear and double checked. We took a room for 2 nights, figuring that we'll leave to Tai'an on Sunday (24th) morning.
Got some sightseeing done as well - climbed to a revolving observatory. View from the hill was amazing of course and the walk was nicec. Then our search for food store started. It is amazingly difficult to find grocery stores around here. We decided that we need some food and snacks with us at all times from now on - otherwise we might end up starving for many hours at times and that we don't want. Also we needed something for breakfast for tomorrow. Hence the need for a store. Finally we just went and asked from a random corner shop of where we could find a supermaket type store. Now we know that when we see a big make-up/cosmetics store then most likely underneath it is a grocery store as well :) Basically we need to look for a big mall type store and it will have food department as well. Finally we got our food.
For dinner we had Chinese dumplings :) This would consist of somemeat inside and noodle like cover for them (nagu hiiglaslikud pelmeenid) - they taseted very good. The only thing was that they were slippery and it was impossible to eat them with chopsticks :) Locals were laughing at us - again :D
In the evening we decided to have a movie night. We watched 2 Estonian movies that i had with me. Both depressing ones unfortunately. And then to sleep we went. Although the fireworks outside did not let us fall asleep for a while :(
Oh and my health has gotten better as well - quite normal already, couple of longnight sleeps and decent meals and all is good.
Throughout the whole day we would hear some sort of bangs, sometimes in the distance and other times closer to us. They would come and go randomly. For the longest time we could not figure out what that was - sounded like shooting. In the evening we witnessed one of those "shootings" quite close up, my eardrums were gonna fall off - it was firecrackers (i'm not sure if this is the right term, but it is something you put on the ground and then fire it up and it starts making shooting noise and there is lots of smoke around it). Later when it got darker then real fireworks started - all over the city. Must find out what the celebrations were for.
During lunchtime we moved our bags to the chosen hostel and checked-in. I'm already getting used to the fact that everything must be explained with hands and making random arrows on the paper :) All gets done and clear and double checked. We took a room for 2 nights, figuring that we'll leave to Tai'an on Sunday (24th) morning.
Got some sightseeing done as well - climbed to a revolving observatory. View from the hill was amazing of course and the walk was nicec. Then our search for food store started. It is amazingly difficult to find grocery stores around here. We decided that we need some food and snacks with us at all times from now on - otherwise we might end up starving for many hours at times and that we don't want. Also we needed something for breakfast for tomorrow. Hence the need for a store. Finally we just went and asked from a random corner shop of where we could find a supermaket type store. Now we know that when we see a big make-up/cosmetics store then most likely underneath it is a grocery store as well :) Basically we need to look for a big mall type store and it will have food department as well. Finally we got our food.
For dinner we had Chinese dumplings :) This would consist of somemeat inside and noodle like cover for them (nagu hiiglaslikud pelmeenid) - they taseted very good. The only thing was that they were slippery and it was impossible to eat them with chopsticks :) Locals were laughing at us - again :D
In the evening we decided to have a movie night. We watched 2 Estonian movies that i had with me. Both depressing ones unfortunately. And then to sleep we went. Although the fireworks outside did not let us fall asleep for a while :(
Oh and my health has gotten better as well - quite normal already, couple of longnight sleeps and decent meals and all is good.
Friday, August 22, 2008
day 6 - arriving to Qingdao - 22.08
We had made bookings for a single night in a hotel in Qingdao. Once we arrived to the city past 11 at night, we were quickly surrounded by taxi drivers in front of the train station - apparently the hotel we got booked was about 100km away :( As their english is as it is then the taxi driver called to one of his friends who translated what i said and also what the taxi driver was saying. After some negotiations and thinking we asked him to take us to some hotel that is closer. So he did, but he kept saying somegthing about police which we did not understand. First hotel we were taken to the reception lady shook her head when we entered - the deal is that since the sailing events for the olympics are taking place in Qingdao, then foreigners must stay at hotels which are 4 or more stars. This rule applies throughout the Olympics :( So basically we are stuck with some very expensive hotels here :( We were taken to another hotel, there we tried to bargain the price - no use. As time was getting close to midnight already then we did not see any choice than to stay in this one. We went to see the room first just in case - nothing pretty, but decent enough. What is with the smell though? Smells like fungus and sigarettes here.
In the morning we nearly missed our breakfast :) We were so hungry though so that would have been bit bad to go on another few hours without food. Breakfast was strange though, lots of dumplings with different fillings and some tasteless cake things. But at least it is food. Took a shower and now we are packing our things again - will leave the bags in a hotel and will try to find more suitable hotel for the next night.
Looking out of the window we are able to see the actual sun and blue blue sky - soo nice :)
So far we have had the luxury of having internet access in our hotel rooms. In the future we are thinking of trying youth hostels as well and there the conditions might not be that good :) So no idea of how regularly we will be able to post in the near future. Haven't really noticed any internet access spots in town either, also no Starbucks - maybe those are only in Hong Kong area?
I also ended up getting a local SIM card, my number here is - 15011199443. This means that my EMT card is not in use at the moment - I do put it in once in a while just to see if there are some messages or something.
In the morning we nearly missed our breakfast :) We were so hungry though so that would have been bit bad to go on another few hours without food. Breakfast was strange though, lots of dumplings with different fillings and some tasteless cake things. But at least it is food. Took a shower and now we are packing our things again - will leave the bags in a hotel and will try to find more suitable hotel for the next night.
Looking out of the window we are able to see the actual sun and blue blue sky - soo nice :)
So far we have had the luxury of having internet access in our hotel rooms. In the future we are thinking of trying youth hostels as well and there the conditions might not be that good :) So no idea of how regularly we will be able to post in the near future. Haven't really noticed any internet access spots in town either, also no Starbucks - maybe those are only in Hong Kong area?
I also ended up getting a local SIM card, my number here is - 15011199443. This means that my EMT card is not in use at the moment - I do put it in once in a while just to see if there are some messages or something.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
day 5 - leaving Beijing - 21.08
Last night we packed till very late and also sat behind the computer posting/e-mailing and loading pictures up. I was sitting right under the air conditioner, i even felt the cool air on my back at some point. Well, once I got to bed at around 3am I was freezing and my throat was aching :( Long cold shrills followed :( After some shaking under the covers I put on my woolen socks hoping that the shrills will go away, but no use :( Finally at around 5am I ended up taking maximum amount of Citrosept drops and that helped luckily. So I had caught a cold :(( In the morning we were suppose to leave hotel at 8am to do the check-out, take our big bags to the train station and head over to the volleyball game. Once the alarm went off at 7am I had gotten about 1 hour of sleep and was still feeling very weak. It was raining outside and had been raining for a while as there were huge puddles on the street. Drank one Theraflu as well hoping to get better as soon as possible as we have a long train trip this evening. I was definitely not going anywhere as I did not feel good and perhaps the volleyball game got even canceled because of the rain, dunno. But in any case we slept in. Riina went and got some fruits and juice for me later on. After eating i started to feel a bit better as well.
Negotiated with the hotel reception lady and got to do the check-out at 2pm instead of noon. Got instructions to get to Beijing South Railway Station and headed off. Getting to the station ended up being a bit more complicated than "take bus #53 for 10 stations" as we were instructed, but all the people are so helpful and nice. Nobody speaks English, but once you got a map with Chinese locations and names you just point at it and they give you further instructions. Of course the instructions come in the form of a long story in Chinese :), but pointing helps. Works like a charm.
We had many hours to kill at the train station, luckily we found electricity plug so i prepared all the entries and am now posting them from the hotel in Qingdao. Train trip was quite fine, the train was a bit smelly, but that disturbed us only for the first 15 minutes or so. I got some good sleep in during the 6h ride. Train went mostly 160km/h and the ride was very smooth.
Negotiated with the hotel reception lady and got to do the check-out at 2pm instead of noon. Got instructions to get to Beijing South Railway Station and headed off. Getting to the station ended up being a bit more complicated than "take bus #53 for 10 stations" as we were instructed, but all the people are so helpful and nice. Nobody speaks English, but once you got a map with Chinese locations and names you just point at it and they give you further instructions. Of course the instructions come in the form of a long story in Chinese :), but pointing helps. Works like a charm.
We had many hours to kill at the train station, luckily we found electricity plug so i prepared all the entries and am now posting them from the hotel in Qingdao. Train trip was quite fine, the train was a bit smelly, but that disturbed us only for the first 15 minutes or so. I got some good sleep in during the 6h ride. Train went mostly 160km/h and the ride was very smooth.
day 4 - olympic stadium - 20.08
In order to get to the stadium everybody had to pass very strict security check. Of course you needed to have a ticket to one of the events in the area to be let through. Security check was much more thorough than at the aiports. Naturally there were metal detectors but besides that they went through everybody's bag, they literally took everything out and laid it on the table. In my bag I had a my tiny laptop - this I needed to power on, he was following the power on process and let me shut it down only after the operating system came up. I also had a camera - with this i needed to take a photo and show them that it really was a camera, not just the shell. Any food and drink was taken away, any other liquid one had needed to be demonstrated - for an example i had hand sanitizing liquid which i needed to use in front of them. Chewing gum packages were also interesting to them and they did not quite understand what that was until i showed them how to "use it" :)
The lines to access the stadium were loong, it took easily 45 minutes to get through. Stadium area consisted also the ever so beautiful and fancy aquatic center. Didn't get close to that though as it was fenced off again, even withing this hyper-super-duper secure area. Aquatic center was illuminated and it changed colors, it was beautiful :) Also the park around in the olympic stadium/complex area was wonderful - clean and friendly.
Now the stadium :) We had tickets to the evening session that started at 19:00 - we got there around 20:10. Our seats were pretty much under the roof, meaning very high up, but that was ok even. Just to sit at the stadium made our mouths drop open. It was huuuuge :) I've been to some huge sports arenas, but this was easily 10 times bigger than what i have ever seen before. There were some other Estonian sitting by us, chatted with them a bit and all I heard was of how bad their living conditions are and how badly it is all organized by the Estonian travel agency. Oh I'm so glad we are doing our own thing - at least we know what we are getting and what we are paying for. Back to the stadium - the construction was magnificent, it was all just so nice and fancy. China has done a great job with the buildings - they really are all that olympic buildings should be.
Events that we had the honor to witness were:
- women's 200m run semifinals
- men's 200m finals
- women's 400m hurdles finals
- women's hammer throw finals
- men's 100m hurdles semifinals (or was that finals too? can't remember)
Most importantly though - we got to see men's discus awards ceremony :D That was wonderful. Yeah we missed the event totally and we missed the chance to congratulate him in person, but we were there for the awards giving :D YAY!
Once and a while we are doing a reality check with Riina: "Hei, guess what? We are in China, watching the Olympic events live :D" the smiles on our faces are widest ever :D
The lines to access the stadium were loong, it took easily 45 minutes to get through. Stadium area consisted also the ever so beautiful and fancy aquatic center. Didn't get close to that though as it was fenced off again, even withing this hyper-super-duper secure area. Aquatic center was illuminated and it changed colors, it was beautiful :) Also the park around in the olympic stadium/complex area was wonderful - clean and friendly.
Now the stadium :) We had tickets to the evening session that started at 19:00 - we got there around 20:10. Our seats were pretty much under the roof, meaning very high up, but that was ok even. Just to sit at the stadium made our mouths drop open. It was huuuuge :) I've been to some huge sports arenas, but this was easily 10 times bigger than what i have ever seen before. There were some other Estonian sitting by us, chatted with them a bit and all I heard was of how bad their living conditions are and how badly it is all organized by the Estonian travel agency. Oh I'm so glad we are doing our own thing - at least we know what we are getting and what we are paying for. Back to the stadium - the construction was magnificent, it was all just so nice and fancy. China has done a great job with the buildings - they really are all that olympic buildings should be.
Events that we had the honor to witness were:
- women's 200m run semifinals
- men's 200m finals
- women's 400m hurdles finals
- women's hammer throw finals
- men's 100m hurdles semifinals (or was that finals too? can't remember)
Most importantly though - we got to see men's discus awards ceremony :D That was wonderful. Yeah we missed the event totally and we missed the chance to congratulate him in person, but we were there for the awards giving :D YAY!
Once and a while we are doing a reality check with Riina: "Hei, guess what? We are in China, watching the Olympic events live :D" the smiles on our faces are widest ever :D
day 4 - the forbidden city - 20.08
Decided to give another try and go and see the famous Forbidden City. It was closed to the public for 500 years while 2 dynasties of emperors (Ming & Qing) lived in there. It is a huge and best preserved complex of ancient buildings and gardens. They advise you to take a full day to explore it, but we don't have the patience for that :) So we spent there about 3 hours or so, probably looked through close to 60-70% of it and that was plenty for us. Weather was really really warm that day so we used all the chances to go through the inside exhibitions where they had air conditioning. Of course the whole thing was magnificent again, it was nicely renovated and well preserved with all its pretty colors and unbelievable level of details.
There are couple of things that i should mention about the Chinese culture and traditions. It absolutely gives us creeps of how they snort and spit everywhere - on the streets in the restaurants in the stores, soo discusting. We were wondering if we will perhaps get used to that by the end of the trip, but i doubt that, it is soo gross. Another strange thing is that whenever they take photos, they stand there with both of their arms open to the sides and making V with their fingers, so strange. What is the deal with that?
In the afternoon we headed over to eat close to the stadium. I must say that the foods we choose get worse and worse as the time goes by :) This time we ordered chicken dish with vegetables. Well, the chicken was there but there was no chicken meat. It almost seemed that we got everything else that was left from the chicken after the meat was removed. Best of all were chicken toes that we found in there, like the actual toes, just sitting there in our food. Not very appertising :( Riina actually even ate a bit of the toes :) Then there was also some spice there, apparently it was cut in half and it was about the size of a plum, but at first sight i could have sworn that this was a bug :) I hope it really was a spice.
There are couple of things that i should mention about the Chinese culture and traditions. It absolutely gives us creeps of how they snort and spit everywhere - on the streets in the restaurants in the stores, soo discusting. We were wondering if we will perhaps get used to that by the end of the trip, but i doubt that, it is soo gross. Another strange thing is that whenever they take photos, they stand there with both of their arms open to the sides and making V with their fingers, so strange. What is the deal with that?
In the afternoon we headed over to eat close to the stadium. I must say that the foods we choose get worse and worse as the time goes by :) This time we ordered chicken dish with vegetables. Well, the chicken was there but there was no chicken meat. It almost seemed that we got everything else that was left from the chicken after the meat was removed. Best of all were chicken toes that we found in there, like the actual toes, just sitting there in our food. Not very appertising :( Riina actually even ate a bit of the toes :) Then there was also some spice there, apparently it was cut in half and it was about the size of a plum, but at first sight i could have sworn that this was a bug :) I hope it really was a spice.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
future plans after day 3
We will be heading to Qingdao on Thursday evening at 17:05 by train from Beijing. Train ticket cost us 300CNY with delivery to the hotel (275 was the ticket price for one person). Tickets were arranged by a friendly person at the front desk in our hotel. We got a hotel booked through ctrip.com about an hour ago already as well, so all seems to be set now :)
Today we visited the Forbidden City and Olympic Stadium and tomorrow we will be heading over to see the beach volleyball event in the morning and then train to Qingdao.
I'm a bit lagging with entries, but will try to fix that shortly ;)
Today we visited the Forbidden City and Olympic Stadium and tomorrow we will be heading over to see the beach volleyball event in the morning and then train to Qingdao.
I'm a bit lagging with entries, but will try to fix that shortly ;)
day 3 - evening activities - 19.08.08
Finding the stadium was not an easy task. This city is really really huge and one block on the map can be kilometers in real life with many many small blocks inside it. Found a local eating place on the road to have dinner. Luckily again they had pictures in the menu (seems to be a standard here), got some sort of pork dish with vegetables and some tea for drinking. Well, I have to say, all the people around us kept staring at us the whole time when were eating - must have been our poor usage of chopsticks? They even giggled sometimes :( We felt like clowns on the stage trying to get this slippery stuff in our mouth :) Also the pork was not the leanest unfortunately. Seems that there is never any nice fillet meet in the stir-fries here, it is always some non-chewable stuff :( Must find out if there is a way around it, perhaps we are missing the keyword here when placing the order :)
About our luck with getting the stadium tickets that evening - impossible. There were many people selling tickets, but the prices started from 2000CNY whereas original price for the same ticket was 800CNY. Bargaining would help a bit, but the prices stayed above 1000CNY no matter what :( We even tried to bargain later on when the show had been on for an hour already but even that did not help. So no go for us. Besides we already have tickets for tomorrow, so we will see the stadium anyways. We ended up sitting around without any TV access :( - till 22:45 or so when the event ended. All the Estonians met up in "the meeting place" as they do after every evening apparently. As we had some communication problems and also logistics problems with triathlon crowd we ended up spotting Estonian fanclub T-shirts on the street and they gladly showed us the meeting location as they were heading the same way. Stayed there for about an hour or so but did not feel like communicating too much with all the rest. Headed back to the hotel at about half past midnight which meant that we missed Kanter's arrival and had no chance to shake his hand and give our congrats to him, but oh well, can't have everything one wants right?
That is a bit sad that we totally missed his whole competition as we did not have access to a TV at all. Later we thought that we should have just jumped on public transport as most of those have live TV playing, at the time we did not come to that though. Oh well, we'll get through it :D
About our luck with getting the stadium tickets that evening - impossible. There were many people selling tickets, but the prices started from 2000CNY whereas original price for the same ticket was 800CNY. Bargaining would help a bit, but the prices stayed above 1000CNY no matter what :( We even tried to bargain later on when the show had been on for an hour already but even that did not help. So no go for us. Besides we already have tickets for tomorrow, so we will see the stadium anyways. We ended up sitting around without any TV access :( - till 22:45 or so when the event ended. All the Estonians met up in "the meeting place" as they do after every evening apparently. As we had some communication problems and also logistics problems with triathlon crowd we ended up spotting Estonian fanclub T-shirts on the street and they gladly showed us the meeting location as they were heading the same way. Stayed there for about an hour or so but did not feel like communicating too much with all the rest. Headed back to the hotel at about half past midnight which meant that we missed Kanter's arrival and had no chance to shake his hand and give our congrats to him, but oh well, can't have everything one wants right?
That is a bit sad that we totally missed his whole competition as we did not have access to a TV at all. Later we thought that we should have just jumped on public transport as most of those have live TV playing, at the time we did not come to that though. Oh well, we'll get through it :D
day 3 - the great wall of china - 19.08.08
Coming from triathlon event we happened to talk with one Irish guy in the bus line back to town (Changping) about the race and where we are from and so on. Moving up in the line we figured that we could go to the Great Wall all together. As always - we got couple of sets of instructions and started our journey. After getting off the first bus and starting to get instructions of the second bus departure location we were joined also by one German couple. After some time the guy offered us a deal that he would take us there for 10CNY each - sounds like a good deal, so we agree to it. Now there we are - 5 adults plus the driver trying to fit into this tiny car (tiny like Mazda-323-tiny), we all squeezed in of course and were stuck there for about 30 minute drive :) But we all got there in one piece - only i lost the feeling in my left leg after first 5 minutes or so :)
Great Wall of China is preserved in many sections and they are all over the place. We ended up going to the one closest to town called Juyongguan. The day was warm of course, even sitting in the shade is too much, it was some 28C in the shade apparently. So there we were going up the steep stairs for ever and ever - was all worth it. I got flashbacks from my Peru trip and the stears climbing up in the mountains. Riina on the other hand had totally new experience in that regard :) We both went all the way up there though! YAY US! :)
Coming down we decided to take the road less traveled and take a detour, which meant that we had to go almost all the way down to the bridge and then half way up again and then slooowly and gradually down on the opposite side of the hill/mountain. Whenever we stopped on the way our legs would shake :) We also met a tiny snake on the way down - the poor thing was doing its best to escape from us downwards, it also tried to hide by the stairs but we still kept coming towards it. And of course we tried to get away from it as well, so we ran downwards past it as quickly as possible :) Yeah, we ran for a while :D
Once we arrived at the bridge Riina promised that she will definitely die if she had to climb any more stairs :) Decision made, we took a shortcut by letting ourselves through some random gate and struggled through some maze of trailers and fences. Those were there from the Olympic cycling event that took place on the very same road that passed by the Great Wall. Local workers were busy taking down the cyclists temporary village and bleachers, but nobody complained about us randomly wondering around there :) At last we ended up on the road, after a bit of walking we passed by the entrance and that was already closed and it was all dead in and around there. At least we knew the bus number that should take us back to town. As we did not see any bus stops around while walking then once the bus came we just tried to wave and hoped that they also pick people up from the side of the road - but no luck the first time :( It already passed our mind that we might have a long walk coming up if they really don't stop for us without the bus stop :D Second bus that passed decided to stop though. Dunno, maybe it was because of the police officer that we happened to be chatting with :D Anyhoo - we got on the bus and then found out that it is going straight to Beijing :) yay.
For evening activities we had agreed with Marko and his dad that we will try to get to the stadium - perhaps we can buy tickets on the last minute or something (as Kanter was competing we really wished we could get to the stadium). So we needed to get off the bus somewhere close to the stadium. My question started a very active discussion between the driver, some passengers and the ticket lady :) I just kept looking left and right to figure out what was going on and if i can maybe read something out of their facial expressions. As much as I could understand the stadium was somewhere close, but the bus did not have an official stop here. At some point the bus driver started to show something with his hands and stopped the bus, we just hurried off at this point :)
Great Wall of China is preserved in many sections and they are all over the place. We ended up going to the one closest to town called Juyongguan. The day was warm of course, even sitting in the shade is too much, it was some 28C in the shade apparently. So there we were going up the steep stairs for ever and ever - was all worth it. I got flashbacks from my Peru trip and the stears climbing up in the mountains. Riina on the other hand had totally new experience in that regard :) We both went all the way up there though! YAY US! :)
Coming down we decided to take the road less traveled and take a detour, which meant that we had to go almost all the way down to the bridge and then half way up again and then slooowly and gradually down on the opposite side of the hill/mountain. Whenever we stopped on the way our legs would shake :) We also met a tiny snake on the way down - the poor thing was doing its best to escape from us downwards, it also tried to hide by the stairs but we still kept coming towards it. And of course we tried to get away from it as well, so we ran downwards past it as quickly as possible :) Yeah, we ran for a while :D
Once we arrived at the bridge Riina promised that she will definitely die if she had to climb any more stairs :) Decision made, we took a shortcut by letting ourselves through some random gate and struggled through some maze of trailers and fences. Those were there from the Olympic cycling event that took place on the very same road that passed by the Great Wall. Local workers were busy taking down the cyclists temporary village and bleachers, but nobody complained about us randomly wondering around there :) At last we ended up on the road, after a bit of walking we passed by the entrance and that was already closed and it was all dead in and around there. At least we knew the bus number that should take us back to town. As we did not see any bus stops around while walking then once the bus came we just tried to wave and hoped that they also pick people up from the side of the road - but no luck the first time :( It already passed our mind that we might have a long walk coming up if they really don't stop for us without the bus stop :D Second bus that passed decided to stop though. Dunno, maybe it was because of the police officer that we happened to be chatting with :D Anyhoo - we got on the bus and then found out that it is going straight to Beijing :) yay.
For evening activities we had agreed with Marko and his dad that we will try to get to the stadium - perhaps we can buy tickets on the last minute or something (as Kanter was competing we really wished we could get to the stadium). So we needed to get off the bus somewhere close to the stadium. My question started a very active discussion between the driver, some passengers and the ticket lady :) I just kept looking left and right to figure out what was going on and if i can maybe read something out of their facial expressions. As much as I could understand the stadium was somewhere close, but the bus did not have an official stop here. At some point the bus driver started to show something with his hands and stopped the bus, we just hurried off at this point :)
day 3 - triathlon event - 19.08.08
Tuesday we had tickets to the triathlon event. Taxi with English speaking driver was waiting for us in the lobby at 7:45 as agreed the day before. Taxi drive was about 1h, once at the Ming Tomb Reservoir there were many many formalities that had to be followed - security check was quite extensive. Location of the venue was amazing, very beautiful environment wise. Once Marko showed his face in the arena, all the Estonians started cheering so we found the crowd quite easily ;) Start was at 10 and the competition was awesome. We had seats at the bleachers, as we learned the track was built so that there was no point in going to the track at all. We saw all we needed and even more :) All in all it was wonderful! Whatta experience :) Saw the Olympic triathlon race :) My first Olympic race in live.
Since the triathlon event was north from Beijing and quite close to the Great Wall of China then we decided to head there after the race.
We have noticed some weird thing with the toddlers (kids who have just learned to walk) pants/shorts here - namely they don't have any seat area cover :) their pants are covering only their legs and when they squat down then their but is all open :) We can't figure it out if it made this way so that they can just squat and pee or it isbecause of the heat or something entirely else. I haven't found a suitable time to take a picture of this strange things, but I will try to do so in the future :-P
Since the triathlon event was north from Beijing and quite close to the Great Wall of China then we decided to head there after the race.
We have noticed some weird thing with the toddlers (kids who have just learned to walk) pants/shorts here - namely they don't have any seat area cover :) their pants are covering only their legs and when they squat down then their but is all open :) We can't figure it out if it made this way so that they can just squat and pee or it isbecause of the heat or something entirely else. I haven't found a suitable time to take a picture of this strange things, but I will try to do so in the future :-P
day 2 - getting to know Beijing - 18.08.08
Once at the airport, we had to get to the hotel somehow. Well should not be that hard right? We turned to the first hotel and travel information center we found and happily showed the hotel name. Well, apparently this was not where most of the tourists they have served have stayed at as first the lady told us that there is no such hotel :( oh uh. Finally she ended up calling somebody and then wrote down the hotel name and street name in Chinese for us. Before handing the paper to us she tried to sell us a car service for 450CNY (about 700EEK) saying that all the taxis are taken and the line is very long. My common sense did not want to accept that so we just walked away. Also it seemed suspicious go me of how she suddenly and magically just "found" the hotel, so i turned to the info center by the main lobby. Well they were certain that there is no such hotel :) they guided us to the next hotel service across the hall. Well ok, new try. Again the first thing they say is that this hotel does not exist, again some calls and again magically they happen to find it. And again they tried to sell the car service, their price was 400CNY, of course we did not take it :). I compared the two writings and they matched, hmm, must be fine then? We follow the signs to the taxi line and guess what :) there are 3 full lines of empty taxis of course.
Allright so we get to the cab and show the paper with the address, he looks at it for a loooong time then scratches his head and then looks at it again.. says something in Chinese and starts driving. Hmm :D we drive and we dive and he thinks we found the street. Well the name looks similar yes, we get to the right building number, but it is not a hotel. He gets out of the car to ask around, so that maybe the hotel is in the courtyard of something, but nope, no hotel there. The taxi driver drives around a bit and nope, nothing. uh oh - again :) finally he calls to the number shown at our reservation. Some Chinese talking follows - blablabla - and he starts driving again. Taxi meter shows 133CNY and it won't move. We guessed he has stopped it because he drove us to the wrong location? We drive some more and finally we get to a nice green hotel building that has a correct name on it :) yeah, seems that this was his mistake. Allright! We made it! And the hotel room is quite nice and also very clean - yay!
As it is only noon, we figured to shower and head over to get some sightseeing in today. At the front desk we get directions on how to find the famous Forbidden City. We get the bus numbers and stops written down in Chinese and in English and head out. We also got some information on the shops where we could find an adapter. Started to look for the store, can't find it. Were also thinking about getting a local sim.. could be useful... first we try to text with our phones just to see if it works - if it does, then we don't even need the local sim. We won't be using it much anyways. Finally we decide to head for the bus and deal with the rest later. First bus we get on should take us just for one stop, then we need to switch. Well once at the transition location, we ended up walking up and down the road for ever and ever and we could not find the other bus number on any of the stops :( We ask and they all talk to us in Chinese and show to the direction we have been to for many times already. Ugh. Finally it turned out that we needed to go down the street and then turn right at the end and then go on forever again. Ok so we get to the other bus as well. That one should take us 10 stops as the ticket lady so nicely instructed us. The distances between stops are very big, so it took quite a bit to pass those 10 stops. Finally we get out and we cross the road to enter the forbidden city... grrmm.. the gates closed 1h ago :( grrr. But oh well - nothing we can do about it anymore. Figured that we could start walking back and then try to find a place to eat. Not an easy task as we found out some time later. After some, perhaps 40m of walking we get back to the bus to head home. At the transition location we found a market - got some fruits for breakfast (very expensive mango's and not so expensive bananas). Being still hungry though, while looking for an eating place we passed by some places that served boiled chicken legs and heads - not very appertising :). On the next corner there was a nice eating place, looked quite new. The menu did not have one word in English, but it got nice colorful pictures. Our dinner ended up costing us both total of 54EEK (29CNY), it was good and tasty and big. This eating place was also close to our hotel - must remember the correct corner now :)
After eating it was straight to the hotel, got taxi ordered from the front desk for the next morning to take us to the triathlon event, quick internet visit, quick shower and then straight to bed.
Allright so we get to the cab and show the paper with the address, he looks at it for a loooong time then scratches his head and then looks at it again.. says something in Chinese and starts driving. Hmm :D we drive and we dive and he thinks we found the street. Well the name looks similar yes, we get to the right building number, but it is not a hotel. He gets out of the car to ask around, so that maybe the hotel is in the courtyard of something, but nope, no hotel there. The taxi driver drives around a bit and nope, nothing. uh oh - again :) finally he calls to the number shown at our reservation. Some Chinese talking follows - blablabla - and he starts driving again. Taxi meter shows 133CNY and it won't move. We guessed he has stopped it because he drove us to the wrong location? We drive some more and finally we get to a nice green hotel building that has a correct name on it :) yeah, seems that this was his mistake. Allright! We made it! And the hotel room is quite nice and also very clean - yay!
As it is only noon, we figured to shower and head over to get some sightseeing in today. At the front desk we get directions on how to find the famous Forbidden City. We get the bus numbers and stops written down in Chinese and in English and head out. We also got some information on the shops where we could find an adapter. Started to look for the store, can't find it. Were also thinking about getting a local sim.. could be useful... first we try to text with our phones just to see if it works - if it does, then we don't even need the local sim. We won't be using it much anyways. Finally we decide to head for the bus and deal with the rest later. First bus we get on should take us just for one stop, then we need to switch. Well once at the transition location, we ended up walking up and down the road for ever and ever and we could not find the other bus number on any of the stops :( We ask and they all talk to us in Chinese and show to the direction we have been to for many times already. Ugh. Finally it turned out that we needed to go down the street and then turn right at the end and then go on forever again. Ok so we get to the other bus as well. That one should take us 10 stops as the ticket lady so nicely instructed us. The distances between stops are very big, so it took quite a bit to pass those 10 stops. Finally we get out and we cross the road to enter the forbidden city... grrmm.. the gates closed 1h ago :( grrr. But oh well - nothing we can do about it anymore. Figured that we could start walking back and then try to find a place to eat. Not an easy task as we found out some time later. After some, perhaps 40m of walking we get back to the bus to head home. At the transition location we found a market - got some fruits for breakfast (very expensive mango's and not so expensive bananas). Being still hungry though, while looking for an eating place we passed by some places that served boiled chicken legs and heads - not very appertising :). On the next corner there was a nice eating place, looked quite new. The menu did not have one word in English, but it got nice colorful pictures. Our dinner ended up costing us both total of 54EEK (29CNY), it was good and tasty and big. This eating place was also close to our hotel - must remember the correct corner now :)
After eating it was straight to the hotel, got taxi ordered from the front desk for the next morning to take us to the triathlon event, quick internet visit, quick shower and then straight to bed.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
day 1 & 2 - arrival to beijing - 17 & 18.08
I'll start from the beginning this time, kinda ignoring the last post :). We almost missed our first flight's boarding as we were sent to the wrong gate in the new modern international airport of Tallinn. Boarding was to end at 15:00 and as i did not see any movement at the gate i started to check the flight numbers, time was 14:59 :D and of course we were at the other end of the airport and our flight left from a totally different gate. luckily our plane was a bit late so we made it in time still. we were like headless blondes already at the first departure - that trip will be fun! flight to Finland was like usual, first going up for 15 minutes and then coming straight down again :)
Flight to shanghai was a bit more interesting ;) flight time 9h20m :( the seats were so narrow and the guy next to me decided to take all the space that he possibly can, which was also half of my shoulders and leg space - oh it was bad. also the movies they showed were horrible or ones i've already seen for more than 5 times. only good thing was that there was no turbulence throughout the whole flight.
So we made it to Shanghai on Monday morning. There we needed to do the whole customs thing with carrying our bags from the arriving flight to the departing one. Now.. i've never seen that much empty space in a building before.. i mean this airport was humongous.. just huuuge.. and there were no people there. It almost seemed that our plane was the only one where they let the people out from :) and then we needed to get to a domestic flight, so we happily followed the signs to the terminal that was shown on our ticket. After walking for at least 15 minutes with good pace we started to double check the TV's with departures information in order to find out if our flight was in schedule. Well, our flight was in time, but there was a red comment saying that it arrives in a different terminal :( so we turned ourselves around and marched back from where we came from :) luckily we still had time. And of course, since the airport was huge there were huuuge lines and check-in areas. I've never in my life seen anything of that sort, and i travel quite a bit. Ok, so we seemed to figure out which line we need and we luckily added ourselves to the queue. Only to find out about 10 minutes later that this indeed was for the correct airline, but it was for international flights and we needed domestic flight... uh oh.. friendly guy who was in charge of ordering the queues guided us the the correct check-in area. So finally we got our check-in done successfully.
Flight from Shanghai to Beijing was about 2hrs i guess :) The minute we got in the plane and sat down i closed my eyes and that was it. I was so tired that i could have even fallen asleep standing up. At some point they served food, i opened my eyes and drank the orange juice, then slept on. Once the plane landed i could not keep my eyes open... it was hopeless. Riina was sleeping as well most of the flight. But in any case we stumbled into the airport and went and got our bags.
(it is 2am and i'm dead tired of a busy and long.. will try to fix it all soon.. and somebody is demandin pictures so i better get the upload started huh?)
Flight to shanghai was a bit more interesting ;) flight time 9h20m :( the seats were so narrow and the guy next to me decided to take all the space that he possibly can, which was also half of my shoulders and leg space - oh it was bad. also the movies they showed were horrible or ones i've already seen for more than 5 times. only good thing was that there was no turbulence throughout the whole flight.
So we made it to Shanghai on Monday morning. There we needed to do the whole customs thing with carrying our bags from the arriving flight to the departing one. Now.. i've never seen that much empty space in a building before.. i mean this airport was humongous.. just huuuge.. and there were no people there. It almost seemed that our plane was the only one where they let the people out from :) and then we needed to get to a domestic flight, so we happily followed the signs to the terminal that was shown on our ticket. After walking for at least 15 minutes with good pace we started to double check the TV's with departures information in order to find out if our flight was in schedule. Well, our flight was in time, but there was a red comment saying that it arrives in a different terminal :( so we turned ourselves around and marched back from where we came from :) luckily we still had time. And of course, since the airport was huge there were huuuge lines and check-in areas. I've never in my life seen anything of that sort, and i travel quite a bit. Ok, so we seemed to figure out which line we need and we luckily added ourselves to the queue. Only to find out about 10 minutes later that this indeed was for the correct airline, but it was for international flights and we needed domestic flight... uh oh.. friendly guy who was in charge of ordering the queues guided us the the correct check-in area. So finally we got our check-in done successfully.
Flight from Shanghai to Beijing was about 2hrs i guess :) The minute we got in the plane and sat down i closed my eyes and that was it. I was so tired that i could have even fallen asleep standing up. At some point they served food, i opened my eyes and drank the orange juice, then slept on. Once the plane landed i could not keep my eyes open... it was hopeless. Riina was sleeping as well most of the flight. But in any case we stumbled into the airport and went and got our bags.
(it is 2am and i'm dead tired of a busy and long.. will try to fix it all soon.. and somebody is demandin pictures so i better get the upload started huh?)
Monday, August 18, 2008
Reporting from Beijing
.. we made it :)
flights were long, didn't get any sleep as usual. but finally we got here :)
This post was just to notify of our arrival... as I don't have the adapter for charging the laptop battery I won't write more at the moment. Will get the adapter tomorrow and then will babble more.
Tomorrow morning we have a taxi ordered at 7:45 to take us to Ming Tomb Reservoir to see Marko's competition at 10 :)
talk to you later!
flights were long, didn't get any sleep as usual. but finally we got here :)
This post was just to notify of our arrival... as I don't have the adapter for charging the laptop battery I won't write more at the moment. Will get the adapter tomorrow and then will babble more.
Tomorrow morning we have a taxi ordered at 7:45 to take us to Ming Tomb Reservoir to see Marko's competition at 10 :)
talk to you later!
Monday, August 11, 2008
ticketytickets :)
WOHOooooo!!! Today I picked up the tickets to three Olympic events! YAY. I was getting worried already that they might not arrive before our departure.... buuh.. but we got them :)
19th of August - 10:00 - Triathlon venue ... which is somewhere north of Beijing called Changping
20th of August - 19:00 - National stadium
21st of August - 09:00 - Chaoyang Park Beach Volley Ground
I also managed to finish the Asus install, skype/ICQ/Y!/MSN - all ready and configured.
So now... basically... we are ready :) Got the most important things together and now the adventure can start. I'm getting excited about the whole thing already :) weeh! It is a bit scary as well of course, but that will pass once on the plane.
One of my co-workers asked me today of how long the plane ride is, well, honestly, i don't wanna know :) probably way too long.
Also interesting to see reaction of different people, some have given me very concerned looks and asked "so you are really gonna go?" :) ... others have stopped talking about October (well my students) in the middle of the sentence and reminded that "well first you have to make it back alive from there you know!" hih ... 5,5 days left :D YAY!
19th of August - 10:00 - Triathlon venue ... which is somewhere north of Beijing called Changping
20th of August - 19:00 - National stadium
21st of August - 09:00 - Chaoyang Park Beach Volley Ground
I also managed to finish the Asus install, skype/ICQ/Y!/MSN - all ready and configured.
So now... basically... we are ready :) Got the most important things together and now the adventure can start. I'm getting excited about the whole thing already :) weeh! It is a bit scary as well of course, but that will pass once on the plane.
One of my co-workers asked me today of how long the plane ride is, well, honestly, i don't wanna know :) probably way too long.
Also interesting to see reaction of different people, some have given me very concerned looks and asked "so you are really gonna go?" :) ... others have stopped talking about October (well my students) in the middle of the sentence and reminded that "well first you have to make it back alive from there you know!" hih ... 5,5 days left :D YAY!
Thursday, August 7, 2008
10 days before departure
count down has started long time ago :)
Asus Eee 900 laptop arrived, white one, as black ones ordering time was way too long. I "modified" it a bit according to the instructions found here , now it looks much much better :D I still have to set up all the accounts for IM's (pidgin and skype), CouchSurfing, Gmail, Flickr, couple of important bookmarks and so on. I got Thunderbird all configured with mail filters (which I simply copied over from desktop), although I'm not planning on reading my e-mail whole lot while there ;)
I have not decided if I'll bring my phone with. It would be very convenient as it has GPS on it. I already downloaded the Nokia maps and everything. Although I have heard that those aren't very good. So I gotta think about the phone a bit.
Back bag has been bought :D It's green :D And it is identical to my friend Riinas with whom we will be traveling together. Travel insurance has been arranged as well.
By the way I have created a separate set for Asia trip 2008 in Flicker (check the right hand side menu, first link under 'Links' heading). Understandably I don't have whole lot of information there yet, but the pictures will be there once the time is right.
I have managed to upload all the travel documents on a server by now. This would include passport, visas, ID card, drivers licence, VISA/debit card, travel insurance, hotel bookings, flight information, immunization passport scans or PDF's. I also put some digital photos there just in case. Of course this is all uploaded into password protected area.
Things that I still need to arrange/do:
- buy a watch... this is a complicated task :( all I need is a digital watch which has stopwatch and alarm. All the digital watches have heart rate monitoring and calorie reading functionalities. I don't need the heart rate monitor, I'm fine with my heart rate as it is - it does not need to be monitored. I also don't care about any calorie reading - no need for that.
- put together the first aid or pharmacy kit, I got to do some research on it still. I need to review the insect repellent options for sure as I have heard mixed things about it. Also gotta check if there is anything about the pollution that I should take note of.
- I'm still missing tickets to the Olympic event. The travel agency who is responsible of it in Estonia is doing such a poor job with the whole thing, they keep amazing me with new mess ups day after day. How come a company like that is still on the market? Beats me.
Other than that all else is getting arranged bit by bit. Vacation notification e-mail sending has started already some time ago :)
Asus Eee 900 laptop arrived, white one, as black ones ordering time was way too long. I "modified" it a bit according to the instructions found here , now it looks much much better :D I still have to set up all the accounts for IM's (pidgin and skype), CouchSurfing, Gmail, Flickr, couple of important bookmarks and so on. I got Thunderbird all configured with mail filters (which I simply copied over from desktop), although I'm not planning on reading my e-mail whole lot while there ;)
I have not decided if I'll bring my phone with. It would be very convenient as it has GPS on it. I already downloaded the Nokia maps and everything. Although I have heard that those aren't very good. So I gotta think about the phone a bit.
Back bag has been bought :D It's green :D And it is identical to my friend Riinas with whom we will be traveling together. Travel insurance has been arranged as well.
By the way I have created a separate set for Asia trip 2008 in Flicker (check the right hand side menu, first link under 'Links' heading). Understandably I don't have whole lot of information there yet, but the pictures will be there once the time is right.
I have managed to upload all the travel documents on a server by now. This would include passport, visas, ID card, drivers licence, VISA/debit card, travel insurance, hotel bookings, flight information, immunization passport scans or PDF's. I also put some digital photos there just in case. Of course this is all uploaded into password protected area.
Things that I still need to arrange/do:
- buy a watch... this is a complicated task :( all I need is a digital watch which has stopwatch and alarm. All the digital watches have heart rate monitoring and calorie reading functionalities. I don't need the heart rate monitor, I'm fine with my heart rate as it is - it does not need to be monitored. I also don't care about any calorie reading - no need for that.
- put together the first aid or pharmacy kit, I got to do some research on it still. I need to review the insect repellent options for sure as I have heard mixed things about it. Also gotta check if there is anything about the pollution that I should take note of.
- I'm still missing tickets to the Olympic event. The travel agency who is responsible of it in Estonia is doing such a poor job with the whole thing, they keep amazing me with new mess ups day after day. How come a company like that is still on the market? Beats me.
Other than that all else is getting arranged bit by bit. Vacation notification e-mail sending has started already some time ago :)
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