Finding the correct station and line to go to from Shenzhen was quite a bit of a hassle. We walked back and forth about 20 minutes trying to figure it out of how can we cross the border and take a train and exchange money. Finally found some people who were able to help. Meanwhile we had our worst meal yet - the food was just bad as were the drinks and the dishes were so dirty that they served the food in and so on and so on - it was just very bad. This was before the crossed the border so were were glad to get to the other side.
Crossing the border was a long process as usual, one side checks you off and the other one checks you back in. Meanwhile there was lots of walking as we figured to cross it on foot and then take a metro line to the city. Metro was a breeze - so very easy. Next step was to find a hostel to stay at. The buildings (and by now I can say the whole city) is a multi level maze. For an example the hostel we are staying at has an address Nathan road 32-50 or something. Which basically means that there is one single entrance and all the firms or hostels are simply located around the building on different floors and corners. Our hostel is on 3 different floors I think and not covering the whole floor. So once you get to the correct floor then you still need to go and look for the correct area :) Sooo confusing at first. The city itself reminds a bit of the same situation - being laid out on many different levels of walkways, car roads and shopping malls with their tunnels.
Here are huuge cockroaches :( I guess everybody knows how I have long fingers, well the roaches are about the size of my thumb and they have long long legs so they move super fast. Oh those are disgusting. I hope there are none in our room (correction after 12 hours - cockroaches have been spotted in our room, but those are the small sized ones luckily).
The biggest part of the morning we were trying to arrange plane tickets for us to go to Vietnam. For this we had to navigate ourselves to the airport which was not really complicate but quite expensive. Subway system is very convenient like in most places, convenient and easy to understand. The only question we got was about switching stations as in Beijing you could buy one ticket and travel between any line without getting a new one, but in Shanghai you have to go out of the station and get another ticket for the transfer line and then come back down again - very ridiculous. In Hong Kong you can buy one ticket for most of the trains - just airport line has a separate and very expensive ticket. Anyhoo, but after finding the right counters and getting the offers from 2 airlines which were at a different sides of the airport (and this place is huuuge you know) and after double checking the offers from internet once more and calculating our possibilities about 10 times over we got our tickets to Hanoi - weheee!!! Our possibilities included flying out of Guangzhou which would have been 35% cheaper, but would have meant taking a 2h train there and flying to Hanoi in the afternoon so we would not have caught our train to Sapa the same evening - that would have been too much effort and extra cost to us so we decided to fly out of Hong Kong to make it easier. Originally we were gonna fly out on the 8th, but later we changed the date to 7th.
After running around at the airport for ever and ever and navigating there and back for ever and ever we made it to Victoria Peak. That was awesome! Well to tell the whole story we got a combo ticket including tram ride there and back + viewing platform + Madame Toussaud's museum.
Victoria Peak is 552m up on the hillside and they have pretty neat old looking trams taking people up there which are going up in a very steep hillsides at times and best of all - they stop at the very steepest places :) so you sit there trying not to fall of your seat :D Tram ride was definitely nice experience - me liked it a lot :) Going down was same - only backwards, so you actually went back first :)
Ok, but on the top there is quite a big building with all sorts of shops and restaurants and museums. We had to take about 10 escalators to get to the viewing platform - they should think about extending the tram tracks :) So the viewing platform - wept us off the feet. It was fabulous, the whole town was like on a plate, all the extremely tall buildings were silently standing in front of us - and there were so many of them. This view was best of all, beats Shanghai and New York and anything else I've seen before. Although in New York there is no such place to look where the whole town is visible as far as I know. So yes, view was magnificent with the buildings and mountains on the background and the boats and water and ports and oh uh, it was soo great.
Last we wondered to the wax museum. I've never been to one before and there were 3 floors of wax people - celebrities, politicians, athletes, rock stars and actors. There were quite many unknown Asian ones, but being in Hong Kong this is understandable I guess. After the museum we headed back down by the tram again - backwards :D
Evening was time to exchange our money (basically get rid of Chinese one), check into our hotel and get a good dinner in.
Oh and the traffic is backwards here - like in England.
Oh and you probably noticed that the days in my headings have been redone - it was a bit incorrect at first, but now it is all fixed and neat :)
Saturday, September 6, 2008
day 18 - Last night in China - 03.09
At the bus transfer van we met one German guy who works in Xiamen. He was going to get his new visa from Guangzhou so was going to the bus station as well. He was very talkative and we had quite entertaining hour with him :) He was so vividly explaining his experiences with this snorting and spitting here - that more than once it has happened so that there is this horrible noise coming from behind him when he is walking on the street and he just growls at the thought of a person who would do such a thing, when he looks over his shoulder to take a look at the monster who can make such noises he would find some tiny lady on high heels walking behind him :) But the way he was describing the situation was hilarious, i laughed so hard that i got tears in my eyes :)
I did not even catch the German guy's name, but we got some interesting discussions in about the ways that locals socialize and spend their free time, of how the holidays are handled here and what they consider entertaining. We also talked about the health care system and education system here - it was good information. And oh the guy was cheerful, most of the time we were laughing so hard that we got tears in our eyes. So that dude was very lively and positive, he has worked here for a year and a half already and was having conversations with the locals quite freely already in Chinese. He also gave us some good hints about arriving to Shenzhen and crossing the border as well as getting to Hong Kong from there. Very useful bits and pieces of information.
All of the sudden we came to a realization with Riina that this is the last night for us in China! We will be crossing the border and leaving China in the morning and later we will take a plane directly from Hong Kong to Vietnam. There will be different money even in Hong Kong and we realized it just at the bus station that we hadn't exchanged any Hong Kong dollars! Uh oh, we will figure it out somehow.
Last night ended up being a bumpy ride :) Seriously it seemed like the bus driver was driving on the side of the road (so on the field) or something. I had hard time sleeping in a bed that was rocking and jumping that heavily. So I did not get any sleep :( We arrived to Shenzhen 2,5 hours in advance.
I did not even catch the German guy's name, but we got some interesting discussions in about the ways that locals socialize and spend their free time, of how the holidays are handled here and what they consider entertaining. We also talked about the health care system and education system here - it was good information. And oh the guy was cheerful, most of the time we were laughing so hard that we got tears in our eyes. So that dude was very lively and positive, he has worked here for a year and a half already and was having conversations with the locals quite freely already in Chinese. He also gave us some good hints about arriving to Shenzhen and crossing the border as well as getting to Hong Kong from there. Very useful bits and pieces of information.
All of the sudden we came to a realization with Riina that this is the last night for us in China! We will be crossing the border and leaving China in the morning and later we will take a plane directly from Hong Kong to Vietnam. There will be different money even in Hong Kong and we realized it just at the bus station that we hadn't exchanged any Hong Kong dollars! Uh oh, we will figure it out somehow.
Last night ended up being a bumpy ride :) Seriously it seemed like the bus driver was driving on the side of the road (so on the field) or something. I had hard time sleeping in a bed that was rocking and jumping that heavily. So I did not get any sleep :( We arrived to Shenzhen 2,5 hours in advance.
Sidenote
The days count was incorrect and I have fixed it now. Also I will be posting quite many entries in one go in a second as there is finally internet connection :) Happy reading!
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
day 18 - Gulang Yu - 03.09
Got up at 9, showered and packed our bags again. This constant packing is becoming a routine already. Now i don't even need to look into every plastic bag when i need something - i know exactly where it is, i just reach and pull it out :) nice and handy.
Then we spend about 1,5 hours on the net - me sorting out yesterdays broken photos upload (i did not get it fixed) and Riina looking for flights from Hong Kong to Hanoi (Vietnam). Apparently the best for us would be to get the plane tickets from Hong Kong, apparently it is as easy as walking up to the ticket counter and just buying them like one bus ticket to Keila or something :) I guess we will see tomorrow :D
And about the pictures - i need better internet connection for this. i was so excited when i heard that there is free wireless at this hostel, but i was not expecting it to be so dead slow. grrr. hopefully we will have better luck in Hong Kong.
So today we made our way to the island by Xiamen called Gulang Yu. It had nice old town feeling to it. We wondered around the narrow and windy old streets, visited local Aquarium and then made our way to Sunlight Rock and the parks around it. We got to take the cable car again :) Got to climb whole lotta stairs again :D (those were Riinas favorite) and of course enjoyed wonderful views to the island and to the coast from the top of the rock. We spent our good 5 hours on the island. And once more we realized - life is beautiful!
On our way to the port we found one great food place on the street. Street food is great in many ways. First it is right there, you don't need to go in anywhere, it is just right there, you walk along and wham there is food in front of you. S4econd it is delicious. Third it is quick. Fourth you don't need to guess, you just look and point. Fifth it is very cheap. Sixth you can go and eat it anywhere. We had street food for our late breakfast and also got one on our way back as well. Wonderful.
Our bus to Shenzhen leaves in about 2,5 hours, there is a ticket office close by where we got our tickets and they will also provide transportation for us to the bus station - so convenient. From Shenzhen we will cross the border and take an express train to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of the 5 special administrative regions so we will be leaving China and entering to Hong Kong area.
Then we spend about 1,5 hours on the net - me sorting out yesterdays broken photos upload (i did not get it fixed) and Riina looking for flights from Hong Kong to Hanoi (Vietnam). Apparently the best for us would be to get the plane tickets from Hong Kong, apparently it is as easy as walking up to the ticket counter and just buying them like one bus ticket to Keila or something :) I guess we will see tomorrow :D
And about the pictures - i need better internet connection for this. i was so excited when i heard that there is free wireless at this hostel, but i was not expecting it to be so dead slow. grrr. hopefully we will have better luck in Hong Kong.
So today we made our way to the island by Xiamen called Gulang Yu. It had nice old town feeling to it. We wondered around the narrow and windy old streets, visited local Aquarium and then made our way to Sunlight Rock and the parks around it. We got to take the cable car again :) Got to climb whole lotta stairs again :D (those were Riinas favorite) and of course enjoyed wonderful views to the island and to the coast from the top of the rock. We spent our good 5 hours on the island. And once more we realized - life is beautiful!
On our way to the port we found one great food place on the street. Street food is great in many ways. First it is right there, you don't need to go in anywhere, it is just right there, you walk along and wham there is food in front of you. S4econd it is delicious. Third it is quick. Fourth you don't need to guess, you just look and point. Fifth it is very cheap. Sixth you can go and eat it anywhere. We had street food for our late breakfast and also got one on our way back as well. Wonderful.
Our bus to Shenzhen leaves in about 2,5 hours, there is a ticket office close by where we got our tickets and they will also provide transportation for us to the bus station - so convenient. From Shenzhen we will cross the border and take an express train to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of the 5 special administrative regions so we will be leaving China and entering to Hong Kong area.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
day 17 - Xiamen - 02.09
We arrived to Xiamen at 1:45 in the morning by bus. As usual we were surrounded by very agressive taxi drivers and other sales people who were overly eager to take us to a hotel. It is not a good idea to arrive to a new location in the dark and at night (so basically anytime between 22:30 and 07:00) as there is no transportation other than taxis and nobody to ask for directions. We tried to avoid it this time as well, but there was no later bus than that - so nothing we could do. Already expecting such behaviour we already new what we needed to do - just keep saying no and move to any direction as fast as possible.
After a few blocks of walking we realized that we are not anywhere close to the city center as we thought we should have been - location of the bus station was known to us. Finally we still ended up taking a taxi to center of the town. No idea where we were dropped of by the bus then :) In the city center we could not locate any hostel at all, seemed like we were at a overly crowded shopping district. After some pondering and looking through our options we took another taxi to the closest youth hostel that we found from the travel guide. Arrived there at around 3:15 :D and after going through our options once more got two beds in a dormitory room again.
Oh the sleep was sweet after 2 nights in moving locations (train and bus). I opened my eyes first time at 1:30 in the afternoon :) and oh the joy of showering, yummmm! Felt like a human being again after good nights sleep and long shower. Then to town. Arranged ourselves bus tickets for tomorrow late night to Shenzhen, leaving on 3rd of September at 22:40, it will be 10 hour bus drive. Next had "breakfast" at some local eating place at 3:15 in the afternoon :D Rest of the day walked around in Xiamen, sat in a park and simply looked around the town. Bought some more snacks, this time dried pineapple, dried plums, some sort of candy and - tadaaaa - bottle of local wine :D
During our late late breakfast we also put together our initial plan for our travels in Vietnam. We are trying to get a flight from Hong Kong (or somewhere close by) to Hanoi in the morning of 8th of September and then train from Hanoi in the evening to the northern border. More specifically later on when we have the tickets.
After a few blocks of walking we realized that we are not anywhere close to the city center as we thought we should have been - location of the bus station was known to us. Finally we still ended up taking a taxi to center of the town. No idea where we were dropped of by the bus then :) In the city center we could not locate any hostel at all, seemed like we were at a overly crowded shopping district. After some pondering and looking through our options we took another taxi to the closest youth hostel that we found from the travel guide. Arrived there at around 3:15 :D and after going through our options once more got two beds in a dormitory room again.
Oh the sleep was sweet after 2 nights in moving locations (train and bus). I opened my eyes first time at 1:30 in the afternoon :) and oh the joy of showering, yummmm! Felt like a human being again after good nights sleep and long shower. Then to town. Arranged ourselves bus tickets for tomorrow late night to Shenzhen, leaving on 3rd of September at 22:40, it will be 10 hour bus drive. Next had "breakfast" at some local eating place at 3:15 in the afternoon :D Rest of the day walked around in Xiamen, sat in a park and simply looked around the town. Bought some more snacks, this time dried pineapple, dried plums, some sort of candy and - tadaaaa - bottle of local wine :D
During our late late breakfast we also put together our initial plan for our travels in Vietnam. We are trying to get a flight from Hong Kong (or somewhere close by) to Hanoi in the morning of 8th of September and then train from Hanoi in the evening to the northern border. More specifically later on when we have the tickets.
day 16 - Wengzhou - 01.09
Train ride to Wengzhou was fine. I got to sleep surprisingly well - Riina was not so lucky unfortunately. This time we had soft sleeper which meant we had soft seats which you could recline a bit. Hard seat is the one we took to Tai'an apparently - this is where we sat on a hard wooden bench squeezed in with all the locals next to us and people standing in the aisle. The train where we had beds - this was apparently hard sleeper - soft sleeper being more luxurious with separate cabinets having 4 beds on 2 levels not 6 beds on 3 levels like the hard sleeper had.
Train arrived to Wengzhou around 7 in the morning. Got directions for the bus station, arranged a bus to Xiamen the same evening, leaving at 18:30. It will be around 8h bus ride. Left our luggage to the bus station. Also got directions on how to get to town and then back again (asked them to write the bus station name in chinese just in case as there are multiple stations here). While walking away from the station there was a group of locals who tried to get into Riinas back bag :( They managed to open the bag up but then Riina noticed them. I have secured my back bags zippers so that it is not possible to simply open them - you'd have to unclip them first, so i'd hear the clip being opened and after unclipping you still have to untangle the zipper strings to unzip the bag - pretty secure system :) . Later a local girl warned us about burglers in the bus and train station as well.
Getting to the town was a hassle as first we took a bus to a wrong direction :) It was quite difficult to get people to help us find directions once we got off the bus as first of all they were quite unwilling to help and also because they did not speak english at all. Finally one half local helped us who spoke quite good english and double checked the directions with his friend by phone. Getting to town was almost 2,5h adventure for us :D
About the town - well we walked around in a blazing sun - it was so hot hot hot, quite unmanageable. At the local pedestrian walk the only eating place we found was Pizza Hut :) so we had a very nice breakfast, consisting of hot chocolate and pepperoni pizza for me :D Pizza Hut is considerably more expensive than any local food place though. Later we walked around in town - what can I say, of all those places we have been so far, i'd say this was a totally pointless place :) To kill time we were trying to find an internet place, but the street did not have enough houses on it so we gave up and spend our afternoon at a local park bench napping and reading amongst the locals who were mostly napping :D Those benches were in shade as well so it worked out quite well - nice and relaxing.
Made our way back to the bus station and had dinner. Dinner ended up being a disaster - they wrote down our orded totally wrong, this seemed impossible though as i was mostly pointing at pictures when ordering. It was amazingly difficult to make them understand that this is not what we ordered and we will not be eating it - please bring us other food. After looots of explaining with pen and paper and pointing at pictures and showing with our hands we ended up what we ordered and got some money back for thing we did not order but they wrote down for us. Uh oh.
Later cleaned up a bit, changed clothes and then it was time to board the bus already. To our surprize the bus was equipped with beds :D :D Riina was on the lower bunk and i was above her on the upper one. There were local movies playing the whole night. Right above my head were the speakers, luckily only the first movies sound was crancked up, later the sound was turned down so it did not disturb my sleep. Another thing was the air conditioning - it blew absolutely freezing air to my feet and face :( Luckily the blanket provided was very thick so my feet were fine, for my head i ended up wrapping a blanked pilfered from finnair flight around my head and throat so that only my noze got air :D worked like a charm for cold air and for the noise as well. Got my beautisleep in without any major problems.
Train arrived to Wengzhou around 7 in the morning. Got directions for the bus station, arranged a bus to Xiamen the same evening, leaving at 18:30. It will be around 8h bus ride. Left our luggage to the bus station. Also got directions on how to get to town and then back again (asked them to write the bus station name in chinese just in case as there are multiple stations here). While walking away from the station there was a group of locals who tried to get into Riinas back bag :( They managed to open the bag up but then Riina noticed them. I have secured my back bags zippers so that it is not possible to simply open them - you'd have to unclip them first, so i'd hear the clip being opened and after unclipping you still have to untangle the zipper strings to unzip the bag - pretty secure system :) . Later a local girl warned us about burglers in the bus and train station as well.
Getting to the town was a hassle as first we took a bus to a wrong direction :) It was quite difficult to get people to help us find directions once we got off the bus as first of all they were quite unwilling to help and also because they did not speak english at all. Finally one half local helped us who spoke quite good english and double checked the directions with his friend by phone. Getting to town was almost 2,5h adventure for us :D
About the town - well we walked around in a blazing sun - it was so hot hot hot, quite unmanageable. At the local pedestrian walk the only eating place we found was Pizza Hut :) so we had a very nice breakfast, consisting of hot chocolate and pepperoni pizza for me :D Pizza Hut is considerably more expensive than any local food place though. Later we walked around in town - what can I say, of all those places we have been so far, i'd say this was a totally pointless place :) To kill time we were trying to find an internet place, but the street did not have enough houses on it so we gave up and spend our afternoon at a local park bench napping and reading amongst the locals who were mostly napping :D Those benches were in shade as well so it worked out quite well - nice and relaxing.
Made our way back to the bus station and had dinner. Dinner ended up being a disaster - they wrote down our orded totally wrong, this seemed impossible though as i was mostly pointing at pictures when ordering. It was amazingly difficult to make them understand that this is not what we ordered and we will not be eating it - please bring us other food. After looots of explaining with pen and paper and pointing at pictures and showing with our hands we ended up what we ordered and got some money back for thing we did not order but they wrote down for us. Uh oh.
Later cleaned up a bit, changed clothes and then it was time to board the bus already. To our surprize the bus was equipped with beds :D :D Riina was on the lower bunk and i was above her on the upper one. There were local movies playing the whole night. Right above my head were the speakers, luckily only the first movies sound was crancked up, later the sound was turned down so it did not disturb my sleep. Another thing was the air conditioning - it blew absolutely freezing air to my feet and face :( Luckily the blanket provided was very thick so my feet were fine, for my head i ended up wrapping a blanked pilfered from finnair flight around my head and throat so that only my noze got air :D worked like a charm for cold air and for the noise as well. Got my beautisleep in without any major problems.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
day 15 - Hangzhou - 31.08
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!!!
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!!!
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