After two long days of travel we arrived in Hue in the middle of the night in heavy rain. Luckily the welcome to the lovely Jade Hotel was much more welcoming. Hue it turned out has a special micro clima dominated by heavy rain. The next two days it started raining exactly 10 min to 1 pm. The first day it was only short and we could simply wait until it stopped the second day it was raining dogs for hours. Luckily cabs are quite cheap in Vietnam.
Archiv für den Monat: Oktober 2014
Halong bay and it’s cones
Halong Bay or Guilin and sea as some call it is located a little northeast of Hanoi. Most people going here book a Tour including sleeping on a boat, going Kayaking, and swimming in the bay. Somehow we missed out that this would be a possibility. We arranged a shuttle bus from our Hostel to Halong city and found our self with 15 hangover twenagers in a little tour bus. In Halong bay they entered the boat and left us with the trouble finding out where the ferry would be leaving the next day (definitely not where the tourists boats start). Even though the extremely cheap hotel we were staying with in Halong city did not provide any kind if service the owner was willing to rent us a motorbike. For Tom the best fun in days, for me a constant cause of fear, because a) the traffic in this country is crazy, b) it’s actually illegal judged with 2 years prison and c) the insurance would not cover the costs in a case of an accident. Anyway, it is a great way to explore the country taking you further than foods (the harbour for the Ferry to Quan Lan was 7 km from the hotel) and it is pretty fun.
Hanoi – the perfectly normal insanity
Was what I thought whenever we stepped outside. 7 mio. people are living in Hanoi and 4 Mio. of them own a motorbike. What ever I said about eloctro scooter in China, it’s nothing compared. As far as I could see there are only two rules: 1. Everyone on a motorbike has to wear a helmet and 2. anything can hit you from any direction at any time.
Traffic lights for pedestrians were generally switched off. When you want to cross the street hope for the motorbikes to drive around you or use a car as shield. Pedestrian lanes do exist, but are usually occupied by parking motorbikes or little plastic chairs leaving no option but to walk on the road. However, we saw not one single accident, even though loneyplanet states traffic is the most dangerous part if Vietnam.
Traveling Chinese busses and trains
Getting into the Chinese public transport is a completely new chapter in the book. You can actually find long distance busses that are modern, clean and seats can put almost into a horizontal position (Less modern version unfortunately also exists). The only weird thing while traveling by bus is that they stop for no apprehend reason for 3-4h in the middle of the journey and that the air condition is set to 17dg making the journey a little uncomfortable.
Lessons learned about China
And last but not least a few prejudges about China:
1. Yes the food is incredible tasty. Nearly everything we ate was not less than very good and we didn’t suffered one single day from stomach ache.
2. Yes they chinese spite where they walk and stand, and no you don’t get used to it.
3. Yes, Chinese copy everything. But it is surely not the same quality. We sticked to the real snickers.
4. Yes, these red lamps are hanging everywhere. But it’s beautiful though.
5. Ja, i kina spiser de hunde. And of course also the never forgotten chicken legs can be found in the supermarket, as snacks at every corner and also in the famous farmers dish in Tiantou.
Weather forecast perspective change
One of the first things you learn when coming to China is that you no longer check the weather forecast in the morning but the air quality index, especially the pm 2.5 value (The amount of particles smaller than 2.5 µm that are able to get very deep into your lungs ad causing lung cancer, isn’t it nice.) We were very lucky, when we came to Beijing having a few days of good and moderate conditions, but the rest of our time in China we spent in rather unhealthy ‚weather‘. It can feel it a little in the lungs (especially when you already suffer from asthma) and their is something brown and smily that you cough up from time to time.
Where it comes from? Mainly from coal-fired power stations, we heard. However, in general people don’t seem to be to bothered. The fewest are wearing masks and people are burning the garbage everywhere even in the city on the street. I fear this is mainly due to lack of knowledge, because there exists a working recycling system.
Anyway, the most irritating fact about the smog in China is that it fucks up nearly every landscape picture. I got a little choice for you from the non processed pictures (and we didn’t encountered the worst conditions a recently in Beijing).
Pinwin English
I think everybody is aware of, that the highest percentage of the Chinese inhabitants have some troubles with the English language. However, we found our selves in the comfortable situation that most sign directing you somewhere, prohibiting something or warning you to do something were translated into english. So even though you don’t understand a bit of the written or spoken Chinese we traveled safely and sometimes quite amused. The following is a little choice of the signs we encountered in the last four weeks. We hope this will spread a little smile.
High, higher, Hongkong
An idyllic bike ride along the Li river.
The idea to bike around in china actually rise already in Beijing when we that it is possible and bikes are rather cheap in china. However we could not really find a good solution to transport our bags and we already doubt it to be a good idea when we felt the heat in Guilin. So we settled on renting to bikes take a day pack and ride the 65 km along the Li river to Yangshuo. The evening before we tried to find a good description if the trail. The possibility that we found in our navigation app was indeed 92 km long. But hey still doable away from the big road, decently close to the river and we could still take the bamboo boat back.
Yeah sometimes expectations are quite high. Half of the time travel busses were taking up almost all space on the road covering us and our lungs in dust. We were most of the time far away from the river though it was idyllic anyway. We were climbing exhausting hills than just biking relaxing on the shores (my butt really hurt after half a day). When we arrived in Yangshuo they explained us that rules where just changed and there was no bamboo boat going back (tried unsuccessful anyway). The route in our navi did not worked out either, roads were rather tiny paths to small for the bikes and just ending in the water without any bridge.
Finally after almost two days unbearable heat it started raining and we arrived completely drowned and dirty back in Guilin.
But there also where the time points when we suddenly found us on a broad asphalt road riding through beautiful valleys without any cars, pomelos and madarines growing next to the road, and many friendly people greeting us along the way. Pretty fun trip, but we skip the biking in china for this time anyway.
Yangshuo – a little short
The destination of our bike trip was Yangshou, a city at the shores of the Li river. Even though we arrived here in China’s national day and lonelyplanet recommended to avoid this place due to it’s tourists herds we found the city quite appealing. This was likely due to our hostel being on the “wrong” side of the river away from the center (anyway reachable by ferry in 2 min). The roof terrace with view over the „skyline“ including a little bar wasn’t a bad feature either (Yangshuo high hostel).
We could easily have spent one or two more days watching tourist fighting for bamboo boats or illegal pelican fishers, strolling through bamboo forests, eating off the tree pomelo or climbing the cast mountains around. Unfortunately our bus to Guangzhou was leaving the next day from Guilin and we had to head back.