High, higher, Hongkong

Veröffentlicht am 13. Oktober 2014 von Steffi

The face of one of the densest populated cities of the world is dominated by shiny high skyscrapers mixed with old pink-grey mansions. One of these mansions was going to be our home for the next three nights and perfectly reflected living conditions. You still have to pay an enormous rent for the tiniest apartment.

Shinny sky scrappers over grow the old mansions.

Our room 2x2m basically consisted of a bed and a toilet room with view to the dirtiest slot, but equipped with air condition, TV and the fastest internet in china. Air condition actually is a standard in this subtropical climate causing condensed water dropping on your head all the time when strolling through the city.

Our tiny little home. But quite good value for Hong Kong.

Our window …

… and the view from our window.

Actually we did not lived in Hongkong but Kowloon. Hongkong is only the half located on Hongkong Island. Though easily accessed by ferry while admiring the impressive skyline (If you overhear talk about a light show of the hong kong skyline at night, it’s only five our six buildings taking part in that, so not a big deal).

A ride n the almost 130 year ferry boats including a outstanding view of Hong Kong skyline, costs 0.25 Euro.

The skyline at night is impressive tough the light show wasn’t more than a few blinking sky scrappers.

Apart from that Hongkong is a very western city with shopping malls, bars and restaurants, but missing all the nice parts and the nice cheap food of other Chinese city’s.

Even these reminders of Denmark could be found in Hong Kong.

Also some British traces could be found in the city.

Instead of spending our whole time in freezing cold shopping malls, we headed for the Hongkong trail just a 15 min bus ride from the city enjoying the mini jungle that is surrounding the city accompanied by beautiful butterflies and other nice guys (I am reconsidering whether walking trips in southeast asia are a good idea.).

Reaching the beach on the opposite of Hong Kong Island required some stripping.

Isn’t he sweet. Just about the size of my hand.

Coincidentally we arrived in Hong Kong just after the first demonstrations for more democracy ended and the second began. But even though the news stated that only two dozen demonstrates are left on the streets we still met quit a few more in the blocked streets. Strange atmosphere and an impressive reminder of the comfortable life in europe.

The umbrella revolution waiting for discussions with the government.

The journalist stating only two dozen demonstrators remained on the streets missed at least a factor 100 in y opinion.

Yangshuo – a little short

Veröffentlicht am 7. Oktober 2014 von Steffi

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Yangshou at night – they do waste some energy on that.

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).

Yangshou high hostel roof terrace.

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.

House boats are coating the shores of the river in Yangshou. Very far from the glittering hotels close by.

Fishing with pelicans still popular though illegal. The bind the pelicans to a rope, let them fish and when the pelican caught one they fetch them again and squeeze the fish from the pelicans neck into a basket. Really mean.

There where the rice is grown

Veröffentlicht am 7. Oktober 2014 von Steffi

The rice chamber of china is located in Gunagxi.

Three hours by bus from Guilin are some wooden villages glued to the mountain sides. These villages are home to the rice farmers of Guangxi that shape the land into green layers.

The villages around Longsheng are framed by the yellow turning rice.

No way to reach these islands of rice by any kind of machinery.

It’s incredible for how little money you can buy rice in the supermarket considering that all the work here is done manually under lots of effort. The villages and rice fields are connected by slim stone paths, which is lovely to look at but a burden for transportation. Everything is transported on the horse or human back.

The main transportation form between terraces and villages are braided baskets carried on the back.

The rice is grown on slim terraces, as slim as 0.3m not allowing for any kind of machinery. And then all the tourist that are to lazy to carry up their luggage and beer themselves ;).

Women waiting to carry up the luggage of tourist. The have a very funny way to set their hair. Traditionally the only cut their hair once in their life between 16-18, so gets pretty long. Therefore its is simply curled around the head and made into a bun at the forehead.

However, this place beautiful and you can easily spend a few days hiking around the little paths or just sitting on your hostel terrace enjoying the view. In October, when we visited the rice is turning yellow giving the fields a perfect horizontal stripe look.

Bamboo rice 1: Cut some bamboo wood. Single out compartments. Empty them and prepare stoppers from corn cores.

Bamboo rice 2: Fill the bamboo with a mixture of rice, meat, fruit and peanuts. Close the bamboo and roast it over open fire.

Cut it open (be careful you will get black fingers) and enjoy.

My dinner ended when I found these in the chicken I ordered. Couldn’t keep Tom from eating.

Guilin and it’s cones

Veröffentlicht am 7. Oktober 2014 von Steffi

For our time in Guangxi we made Guilin our base. Already upon arrival we were hit by the heat confirming that we caught the summer again. 30˚C and pressing humidity. Luckily almost all hostel rooms contain air condition.

Guilin seen from the top of a cast mountain.

Guilin has it’s very own charm. This little Chinese town (only 4.5 million inhabitants) spreads it’s arms between forgein looking cast mountains and the syrup like Li river. The water can be found everywhere in the city being home to ancient pagodas, fisher and their boats and in case also serve as a wash for scooter, cloths, babies or dogs.

The moon and the sun pagoda, you may guess which is which.

Fisher at the shores of Li river. Hobby or profession, we don’t know.

Scooter wash. We didn’t dare to try the local fish that are served everywhere in the city.

Two other remarkable things are the bakeries all over town that sell delicious bread (also because it is real bread) and the „Ampelmännchen“ (The only english translation I found was „little light man in traffic lights that indicate when to walk“). When we encountered the first we thought somebody programmed them wrongly because it was rather humpingly jumping than walking. After a while we actually got the impression somebody made a statement for „more tolerance with disabled people“ because each Ampelmännchen had a different kind of motion disorder.(MVI_7483). From here we took a trip to the rice terraces around Tiantou and a idyllic bike ride to Yangshuo along the Li river.

Fisher boats or actually these were rather house boats, since people are living on their boats.

Express Xian

Veröffentlicht am 30. September 2014 von Steffi

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After a night in the train we arrived in the grey an rainy Xian. Since it still was pouring down at late morning we decided to head for the Terracotta Army a day earlier. Surprisingly we found the bus already after 10 min searching. Arrived and after buying a ticket a Chinese women tried to talk us into taking a guide, but we refused. Many other people in this crowded place didn’t and we visited the warriors together with a crowd of Chinese tourist and their screaming guides. Maybe I was just hungry but I can’t say that I enjoyed it very much.

The chinese, the cameras and noisy guides.

The chinese, their cameras and their noisy guides.

Anyway, the warriors were interesting to look at. The poor guys that had to build them more than 2000 years ago must have been as bored as the people that are digging them out again.

Digging for warriors part 1.

Digging for warriors part 2.

Digging for warriors final part 3. They are unique! But whether this is a feature or just comes with their manual creation, who knows.

A funny thing that we observed on our way back were the hundreds of people selling pomegranate and only pomegranate. The area must be quit famous for this fruit.

Back in Xi’an we had a stroll through the famous Muslim market, which was still crowded at 9 pm. The have a famous street food, that everybody calls Xian burger, but in principal is pulled beef stuffed in a roll a bit like kebab. Not a bad choice though, if your are okay with eating in the street.

Xi’an burger or pulled beef in some bread.

Being rewarded with sunshine the next day, we went to the 13km long city wall rented a bike and enjoyed the feeling of rolling along a boulevard.

Biking Xi’an city wall. It is probably the safest place to ride a bike in the whole city.

The whole 13km are decorated with these red lamps illuminating the wall during night. (they have to be changed regular because the red is fading in the sun.)

Pingyao – sleeping like a chinese emperor

Veröffentlicht am 30. September 2014 von Steffi

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The lovely old buildings finely decorated for the tourists.

Pingyao is a rather small Chinese city (only half a million inhabitants) that due to its vanished importance maintained its historical center protected by restored city walls. Former courtyards are transformed into hotels and hostels, but kept the historic interior making us sleep like an emperor from the Qing dynasty. The bed was simply build by brick stones with a thin layer of mattress on top. Pillows felt like filled with rice and the whole thing was framed in pink curtains. We had a perfect night sleep.

Our hostel backyard by night. We got the very last room in the third backyard.

However, as few foreigners as you meet her as many Chinese tourist visit this place and made a point about living inside a tourist attraction (we also seemed to be a big attraction and were saved on many phones and memory cards).

More about being a good subject for photography than actual protecting the stone houses from burning.

A little choice from the souvenir shops framing Pingyaos streets.

Anyway Pingyao is lovely. Our tour around on the city wall was nearly as lonely as in the woods, the courtyard museums are good and short afternoon entertainment (included in the ticket for the wall for 15€!) …

Excaping the crowd. Pingyao city wall.

… and whenever we headed outside the wall we left the touts behind us and were met with a mixture of friendliness and curiosity. Actually eating out get a whole new meaning, since food was a lot better and cheaper outside the walls.

Pingyao side streets outside the city walls.

Chinese street food „Spätzle“ and a very amused chief, when we set down and even wanted to make pictures of him. Look out for him in Pingyao, great choice.

„Spätzle“ are served in spicy soup. Yummy

Biking Beijing

Veröffentlicht am 26. September 2014 von Steffi

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Tom biking on the bike highways in Beijing, that are usually packed with bikes, e-scooters and cabs.

After a total of a 30h Train and Bus Trip we stumbled out of the Busstation into the never sleeping Beijing. Friday night 2 o’clock welcomed us with street food, Chinese beer and a buzzing sunlintun nightlife. No wonder that you see non-Chinese faces as soon as you step out the door because every nationality settle down here easily. Without any expectations I couldn’t come around to like Beijing immediately.

View from the apartment of Tom’s college (6 am).

Next day we could move to one of these westerners, a former college of Tom, into one of these big and nice apartments with a view over the city. (Thanks so much for the great time.)

Eating hotpot with our perfect hosts.

And how great, she could borrow us two bikes to explore the city. If you bring some sense of adventure, irresponsibility, no fear and no common sense, bike this city! Bike lanes are fairly huge (even though often blocked by parking cars), their are thousands of Chinese on bikes and electric scooter indicating when to cross the red lights and where to squeeze between cars and busses and most drivers are despite prejudges aware enough to not run you over. So even bikes to cars it is still possible to survive and we saw so much more than in a bus, cab or metro.

We visited the forbidden city (keeps the tradition on Mondays) together with as it felt a million Chinese tourists (90 years of openness seemed not to have compensate for the 500 years of forbidden entrence) and wandered for hours between red walls and yellow roofs. Unfortunately or audio guide was not always with us.

Queuing for tickets to the forbidden city with a few other visitors ;).

Workers repairing the square in front of the entrance. Funnily it always takes at least three workers to do something.

… and again a few other visitors taking pictures of some old chairs. Wish I was a kid again.

Fig. 3. A representative image of the yellow roofs in the forbidden city. Most impressing is that such a huge area can look so alike.

The audio guide didn’t really fit my ear size making me a little Indian girl.

We were not the only ones being exhausted after a two hours tour in the forbidden city.

However, the biggest attraction of this city are the people living here. The banana Chinese looking important in suits next to glittering modern buildings, the youngsters in their joggingschooluniforms, the grandparents in green parks, the families living the life’s in the left over hutongs (old traditional housing districts that we enjoyed strolling very much), all the people earning their income on the street. Sure the car drivers using their horn more often than their breaks but everybody we met was friendly and helpful and offered us a smile.

Cleaning crew at Tian’men. The guys with the lowest wage definitely had the most fun.

The historic hutong, containing small shops like this bike repair shop, are slowly replaced by modern high towers.

Hutongs by night. An old lady ridding her three-wheeler home.

School kids going home at around 9 pm. Its not being fun to be between 6 and 19 in China.

Beijing food market. You can buy the fresh made noodles for an apple and a egg.

Beijing food market the second. Everything that is eatable can be bought here. (And you remember chines eat everything with four legs except tables, everything that flys except airplanes and everything that swims except boats.)

Steffi and Tom on the Road

With Tommy traveling in the trains of this World.

Archiv der Kategorie: Places

High, higher, Hongkong

Yangshuo – a little short

There where the rice is grown

Guilin and it’s cones

Express Xian

Pingyao – sleeping like a chinese emperor

Biking Beijing