Visiting the Netherlands

After leaving Hong Kong, I went directly to the Netherlands to visit Rob. I had really missed him even if it had only been 3 weeks since we last met. Being in a distance relationship is hard, but I know we can do it 🙂
It was rather strange for me to go back to Europe again after 5 months in China. All of a sudden everybody looked like me again, and people didn’t stare. I felt as if I had more space again as well somehow.
I only had a few days in the Netherlands, but I had a great time. Utrecht, Rob’s hometown is really nice. The canals are really nice and I really like the buildings too. While I was there we went to the Heineken experience in Amsterdam as well and we drove to an ice-skating range, but it was closed because of really strong winds. Driving around was nice as well though, everything is really flat and you see a lot of windmills (surprise surprise).
We also did a road-trip to Belgium and a city called Antwerpen. I had never been to Belgium before, so it was pretty cool to be able to just drive there in a few hours. Antwerpen was pretty nice even if we just had some hours there. We saw the central station and the main street, but those were awesome 🙂 We also had chocolate and Belgian waffles – yummy ^^

I had a great time in the Netherlands ^^

Ocean Park

Our last day in Hong Kong we went to see Ocean Park. Ocean Park is a mixture between a zoo and an amusement park so it was plenty to do and see. For my mother and me, the day started with a so-called dolphin encounter. We got to go into the water in wading suits and pat the dolphins, feed them and take pictures with them. It was a really cool experience and we got to learn a lot about the dolphins as well before meeting them.
Later on me and my brother took some of the bigger rides while my parents took my sister to the smaller ones. The newest roller-coaster was pretty great, it is on the edge of the mountain so that you almost feel as if you are falling down.
We all met up after a few hours to look at the pandas. Ocean Park has 4 pandas and although they were inside their shelters, they had placed cameras inside so we could still see them – really cute 🙂
Before we left we also got to see a pretty nice water-show. They used music, light, fire and water to tell the story about two dragons.
After the show it was time for me to get to catch my plane to the Netherlands,  Hong Kong was pretty awesome, I definitely want to go back sometime.

Macao

Abour 1 hour by ferry from Hong Kong, Macao seemed like a great option for a day trip. We took the ferry early in the morning and were all really happy with how nice and smooth everything was – until we got to the immigration area of the Macao ferry terminal. The line seemed neverending and people were trying to cut in front of us a lot, some of the other tourists somehow managed not to understand the simple concept of filling out an entry-card (even if these cards are handed out on the ferry and everything) starting to fill them out when they got to the counter. The chaos made us all quite disapointed and at one point we were even discussing the posibility of simply taking the ferry back to Hong Kong.  After about 1 and a half hours waiting we got through immigration. Im not sure if my entire family agrees, but I think the wait was worth it 🙂
Macao is a really special place – the standard of living is even better than in Norway, as there is no income tax – this is covered by the 35 casinos. There is also free health care, school, etc but it is extremly hard to move to Macao if you’re not born there. Macao was once a Portuguese colony for almost 500 years, but it was given back to China in 1999. The signs are still all in kantonese and Portuguese and there’s a strong portugese minority still living on the isles.

We ran into some guides outside of the immigration counters and decided that with a guide we would probably be able to see at least double of what we would manage on our own if we got a guide – so we did.  After having breakfast we wen’t to Macao Tower, the 10th tallest tower in the world.  The view from the tower is quite nice, you can see all of Macao and also parts of mainland China which is really close.  The tower is a kinf of crazy place, as people get to go outside of the observatory and do a “skywalk” (with safety equipment of course) – not to mention the tallest bungeejump in the world is dwon from there as well. We saw a guy do the jump and it looked simply insane. The tower is a paradise for adrenaline junkies! 🙂

Our next stop was slightly more traditional – we wen’t to the temple of Macao. This budhism temple dates back to before the Portuguese colonized Macao and it features budha statues as well as tons of incence, you can smell the temple before you actually spot it.  It was nice to see that some of the old culture still lives on in Macao as well.

After checking out the temple we drove up to a church overlooking the city centre – the view was really nice:

Next stop was the St Pauls church – or what is left of it anyways. Everything but the facade burned down, but they kept it as a landmark and it is now one of the most popular sights in Macao. The area around the facade features Portuguese style buildings, without the characters I would have thought I was in Southern Europe somewhere actually. Really interesting combo, hehe.

Our final stop before heading back to Hong Kong was the biggest casino in the world (according to our guide anyways) – The Venetian. They have actualy tried to recreate several parts of Venice, including landmarks, gondol rides, etc.  We didn’t really enter the actual casino as my brother and sister aren’t old enough, but I had a quick look and it looked huge. The reception area and the outside of the casino looks pretty interesting as well though – especially since my family and I have been to Venice before, hehe.  Like my mum said “tacky and cool at the same time”. 

This ended up as a rather long blogpost, but it was a rather long day as well and we saw a lot. I think that if Im going to do Macao again I will try to stay at least one night – really cool place though and Im sure it’s a gamblers paradise 🙂

Hong Kong

After a bit over a week traveling in mainland China, my family and I headed down to Hong Kong. I got to say even when we arrived in the evening I could tell they used to be a British colony. They drive on the left side of the road, everybody appears to speak english and there are a lot more tourists (especially from Britain) around. Our first day we wen’t down to central and had a look at the harbor area before taking the bus up to Victoria Peak. You can see more or less the entire area from Victoria Peak so naturaly the view is amazing. We stayed up there for a while taking photos in front of the view:

In the evening we wen’t to Kowloon and saw the biggest permanent sound and light show in the world: A Symphony of lights. The lights on several of the buildings both on the Hong Kong isle and in Kowloon are involved and it is all coordinated with the background music. It  was really impressive and I enjoyed watching it 🙂

After the show my parents and sister went back to our hotel while me and my brother stayed behind to look at some stores. After finding some new clothes we realised we were a little unsure about the way back to the ferry. We ended up walking around for an hour or so trying to find our way back and it was a relief when we saw the harbor again. We found the last shuffle bus back to the hotel just in time – phew! 🙂  My first day in Hong Kong was overall really nice – not to mention warm, the temperature was close to Norwegian summer while we were there, loved it ^^

Our final day in Guilin

Our final day in Guilin, we started out by going to the Yao Mountain – the highest mountain in Guilin.  To reach the top we took the 1.4 km long ropeway. The ropeway is quite convinient and you get an even better view than you would have  if you went up on foot as the ropeway is higher than the trees most of the time.  Not everybody was too happy with the ropeway though, my mother is terrified of heights so I think she really got to push her limits doing this.  At the top of the ropeway there are golden budha statues and, of course a great view.  When going down from the mountains we took the ropeway halw way down and then for the rest we took bobs, the bobs could go pretty fast and we all had a lot of fun taking them.

Our next stop was the Reed Flute Cave, a great place to look at limestone cave formations. The formations are enchanced by multicolored lights, making the cave even more beautiful. We walked around inside of the cave for quite some time as it is rather big, some of the formations looked like animals, some like trees and one they even said looked like Guilin:

As you can see on the picture, this cave is definitely worth a visit and so is Guilin. This was our last day traveling in mainland China so my next entry will be about Hong Kong 🙂

Arriving in Yangshuo

Our beautiful river cruise brought us to Yangshuo. Yangshuo is oficially a part of Guilin and it is located slightly further up in the mountains. It is a pretty small and peaceful place – but you can still find a nice place to eat or buy things. My brother and I had dinner outside looking at the beautiful rocky hills some more, hehe. In the evening we all went to a show created by the same man that made the Beijing Olympic ceremony. It was about the daily life of several of the minorities living in the Guangxi province, featuring singing and dancing among other things. As the river is a big part of the life in this province it was also used as a stage in the show – impressive! 🙂

Sadly my camera doesn’t do nightshots very well – but it really was an awesome show.

A Cruise on the Li River (from Guilin to Yangshuo)

One of the greatest highlights of our family trip in China was definitely taking a river cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo on the Li River.  The cruise took us about 8 hours, as the river is really narrow in the winter, making it harder for the boat to drive quickly.  The Li River might just be one of the most beautifull places I’ve seen. It is surrounded by the characteristic Rocky Hills that you only find in the Guangxi province, making the view simply breathtaking. On the boat we met a really nice family from Philadelphia, America. They were all quite interesting, had traveled a lot and we talked to them a lot during the cruise – they even invited us to come visit them in America. From the boat we could see some local farmers with their animals and also some fishermen using birds to fish. The weather was nice and warm so we stayed on deck most of the time, enjoying the scenery.  I think it was a great way to see the rocky hills in a relaxed setting together with other tourists in the area. Here are some more pictures:

(Me on the boat)

(How’s that for a view?)

(And a Panorama of the view – click it to see the larger version)

(Farmer taking his Bull down to the water to drink)

And yeah that’s just a few of the pictures I would like to post – but Im guessing this is more than enough already to browse – loved the Li River Cruise!

Guilin

After a few great days in Hangzhou we took the plane further south to the Guangxi province, starting with a city called Guilin for Christmas Eve. It was truly great to come out of the airport and feel that in fact I didn’t really need to wear my jacket anymore as it is way warmer in the south.  Guilin is more or less devoted to tourism and the government have even moved all of the factories outside of the city centre. They have also built a lot of new tourism attractions  -like the sun and moon pagoda (on the picture), their actually just about 10 years old. After lunch we had some spare time just walking arround looking at the city. Mybrother got himself a new pair of Allstar shoes  and I found some cofee. It was nice with a slightly less intensive afternoon after seeing at least 6-7 different sights a day in Suzhou and Hangzhou.  In the evening we wen’t on a lake cruise.  Guilin has 4 lakes within the city and they are all connected for the tourists enjoyment. The boats went on a round including all 4 lakes and several sights built there for us to see.  There was  fishermen using birds to catch fish, the moon and sun pagodas of course, an artifical village and several people singing, playing instruments and dancing.  It was all rather impressive, but also felt a little  artificial somehow.

Since it was Christmas eve, we wanted to have a nice dinner together and our guide knew a nice place. My family had been struggleing with Chinese food and were all pleased to learn this place was Italian. Guilin definitely is a comfortable place to spend time in the winter and is a very easy city to get arround in, perfect base if you want to visit the Guangxi area and see the  rocky hills, etc.

 

Wuzhen

(Again I am very sorry for not blogging for a while, it is still the Great Firewall of China that is the issue. It will hopefully be a lot better from now on though as the new VPN Im trying is a paid one with better quality than the free ones ^^ My blogging is about 2 months behind realtime, but hey at least this way I wont run out of cool stuff to write about Im hoping)

During our stay in Hangzhou, me and my family went on a daytrip to another Canale Town – Wuzhen. About 90 minutes from Hangzhou, this was a really interesting town with traditional buildings all in brown, canales of course and several small museums including the fabric making museum, the bed museum and the alcohol museum. I especially liked the alcohol museum, you could see how they brew chinese Baijiu and even have a taste.

We also went to see the shadowplay, hard to explain but basicly there are dolls made out of colored paper behind white paper and um.. well it was really nice perhaps a picture will make it look better than my lousy description! 🙂 The actors also sang and played instruments so we were rather impressed.

All in all Wuzhen was the most interesting canale town Ive been in, because of all the museums and people making things happen. I liked all the other canale towns as well of course, but it was simply more to do in Wuzhen, definitely worth a trip 🙂

Hangzhou

After a couple of days in Suzhou, my family and I took the train to Hangzhou.  We started by a boat trip on the West Lake – perhaps the most famous sight in the city. The lake was truly beautiful, surrounded by trees, pagodas and temples. According to our guide the government had to tear down the more modern buildings that used to surround the lake, in order to get it on the world heritage list.  After our boat trip we headed directly to the Lingyin Temple, featuring the Feilang rock carvings and two great temples. The Feilang rock carvings are basicly tons of buddha statues directly carved into the mountain wall – was quite impressive and special, also because of how many they are.

On our way up to the actual Lingyin temple I saw a pretty modern monk, he was riding a motor cycle, haha:

A rather priceless picture if I may say so myself. The temple area was rather impressive, huge temples with large buddha statues inside that people prayed to, including my sister that decided to become a buddhist for one day.

After we were done looking at the temple we went to a tea plantation. We got a tour and a lecture about green tea and how healthy it is. In China tea is very important and they have their own top 10 tea list. The tea from this plantation (The Dragonwell tea) is number 1 on the list, something they onviously were very proud of. My dad loves tea and the rest of us got intrigued by watching the tea remove all fat from a glass with rice and fat, so we all bought a box of tea each.  In the evening we saw a show about Hangzhou, it’s history and way of life. Tea was an essential part of the show as well, so Im guessing Hangzhou is possibly even more interested in tea than the rest of China. The tea does taste great though and it might even have helped my cold go away. More about the family trip tomorrow, have a nice day ^^