HK - Shenzhen - Shanghai(Nanjing - Xitang - Zhouzhuang - Suzhou)

Hong Kong

Last time I wrote, I had just arrived in Hong Kong. I spent 2 weeks there. Unlike what you might expect, those were my most confined and homely yet.
Not at first though. As said in my last blogpost, at my arrival I went to the notorious Chungking Mansions. For a few days I stayed there, in a very central locaton, enjoying the bustle and energy. I met a nice girl through couchsurfing, we went out a couple of times, doing such exciting things as going to the space museum together. On a lone walk through the city, I pretty randomly met a canadian guy. We had a great time together and decided to go to another place.
He had heard about this one hostel up in the mountains of Hong Kong Island, at a rather inconvenient but beautiful location. At the edge of the city, walking a long way up a small path through dense forest, it lay on the very top. There an open ocean lay in front of us, dotted with islands and disclosing a sideway view of the skyline. My canadian friend was a gifted cook, so the rest of my stay felt more mediterranean than anything else. We bought food in a market closeby, cooked them up in the big kitchen, enjoyed the sun, read up and watched the big boats go by. This delightful routine was only interrupted by long walks through the city and the surrounding nature.
At the hostel I made my first chinese friend who didn't speak a word of English. She was an interior architect. Surprisingly we could talk for hours about a bunch of subjects. I couldn't help being impressed by the progress I had made in Chinese. However, after traveling on and some disappointments later, being unable to have more profound conversations with other chinese speakers, I rather felt impressed by how much communication is dependent on wanting to understand each other and how with the right person surprisingly much can be said with very little means. Language is a very personal thing.

HK turned out to be my favorite city in China, so a bit more about it. HK has everything to love about a world city, but is very unique in its form. It consists of several mountaineous islands. As on the most popular one, HK island, building is usually limited to the coast, as inland is too steep. There nature gets free reign, in a tropical abundancy I'm sure many people are unaware of. This results in the sum of both a scarcity of available plots, causing the sureal amount of skyscrapers, and behind this a background of even more imposing nature.
Living in such a vertical city was unusual to me. A HK resident might wake up at home at the 26th floor. A lunchdate might be had in another building at the 15th floor. Off then to the sauna, hairdresser or fitness in yet another building at the 21th floor. Doing some afternoon shopping in a mall might as well be somewhere 50m above as below ground. I'm sure I'm just a boy from the small capital of a little country, when I say all of this filled me with wonder.
Sadly I was still a bit sick at that time, but I did go out once, to what might have been one of the coolest bars I ever went. At the top of one skyscraper, slightly elevated at the foot of the hill, it had all glass walls and an incredible view over the city. Unbelievably, the bar had a rooftop terrace, with speakers outside.

Shenzhen

Next up, I decided to go to Shenzhen. This city lays right next to Hong Kong, back on the mainland. It was truly non-existent 30 years ago and is now one of the biggest and richest industrial cities in China. I wasn't planning on spending a lot of time there, since it doesn't have a good reputation. The city is made up of uninspiring (this is a euphemism) apartment buildings, bland offices andfactories.
After expensive Hong Kong, I was keen on finding a couchsurfing host in Shenzhen. I wrote a ridiculous amount of people and got lots of responses. Eventually I ended up staying at Zhang Yi's place. She was very social and welcoming, and had quite a few traits unusual for a chinese person. Foremost her excellent english, her feeling for sarcasm and her foul mouth. Our first meeting consisted of going to a pizza hut (which had been months ago for me) in a mall, where we got really drunk somewhere in the afternoon. During the week she had to work every day, but I had a great time at her apartment.

The other people who replied me on couchsurfing, at whose place I wasn't staying, I met during the day for various activities. This way I got to know a lot of locals.
Also I had met a nice girl 2 months earlier in Yangshou, the region with the beautiful karst-mountains. At that time, I found her immediately awesome when she told me she was an optical engineer, working on lasers. She actually lived and worked in Shenzhen, so we met for a couple of very entertaing dinners and discussions about modern china.
So with her or others I went to parks, a faraway beach and a great day at a wild waterpark. I also went to some bars, at that time dominated by the World Cup. You couldn't miss it. Almost every bar projected the game, as well as malls, city squares, even the tv's in busses mostly showed football. Surprisingly, it was a great pleasure watching this in the company of chinese people. Their enthusiasm was enormous, and any excitement on television instantly possessed the crowd. Funnily though, they clearly weren't that experienced in watching it. Every time the ball rather obviously missed the goal by 5 meters, 90% of the public only figured this out after some 20 seconds wildly clapping and excitement for the goal. Don't even mention off-sides etc.

Meeting up locals, I made one of my better friends yet, with whom I made a short trip to Guangzhou.
Same as in Shenzhen, old authentic parts are hard to come by andthe city is build mostly of these standard, immensely ugly apartment buildings. But then there's the ambitious city center. It makes you wish you could fast-forward some 5 years to see the result. Central is a vast muddy expanse, to become a park. What's already finished are both a museum and an opera of beautiful modern architecture (especially thelatter, designedby Zaha Hadid), surrounded bylots of impressive skyscrapers, soaring up to 400meters. And then the tv-tower. More than 600meters high, brilliantly designed and perfectly located. A modern Eiffel-tower.

Shanghai

I decided to head for Shanghai a second time, since I had only visited the city itself, not the neighboringregion.First Iwent 2 days to Nanjing, for a stop-over.I quickly made a friend there, a design student. We went to a forest,got lost andended our day partying.The day after, I went to Shanghai, couchsurfing and planning the rest of my trip. I asked the girl from Nanjing if she didn't want to join me for a while.Together we went to some of the most beautiful cities in China. Firstly the watertowns of Xitang and Zhouzhuang. As you'll see on the pictures, these small watertowns are incredibly gorgeous.They are popular tourist locations, although a lot of the local people still live there, once leaving the central roads . Advice: spend the night. Late in the evening and early morning walking is a delight!
Afterwards we made a short trip to Suzhou. Some nice parts, some less. Wealso visitedthe famous museum by IM PEI, which I found rather disappointing.

We had a great time together. When back in Shanghai, time had come to go to Beijing. My friend's small hometown lay somewhere in between those two, so she invited me for a short stay at her house. I was happy to go somewhere a bit more off the beaten track and be invited in a chinese home. Her parents were the most generous.
Dinner was quite a funny experience. Besides the delicious food, a decent amount of beers was placed on the table. As usually, these were served in small cups. Drinking is only done mutually, where everyone together empties their cup. Quite different as in Europe is the pace at which people drink. Clearly the purpose is to be as drunk as possible in the shortest while, preferably long before the end of dinner. Every few bites I could get, the father proposed another round of 'Gan bei!' (literally meaning dry cup).


Next up, Beijing and a trip to the land of the milk & baby-voiced, subwaywagon-breasted catgirls.

Kunming - Shanghai - Hong Kong

A brand new update from Hong Kong.
The last 2 weeks were great, although the last 2 days were really crappy (more about this later)
To start from the beginning, last time I wrote, I had just arrived back in Kunming, with a week left before heading to Shanghai.
As you could read, I was planning on travelling a lot in this period, but shame on me, I stayed another week in good old Kunming.
Quickly when I arrived, I met a cool guy from Berlin, Moritz. Together with Yang Yang, the painter, we went to a great electronic party.
For some reason there were some drums standing on stage next to the dj, and me and Moritz, a drummer, ended up playing those later that night. (still couldn't beat those memorable nights in Brussels though)
Afterwards we ended up in another bar. There weren't a lot of people left and I was pretty drunk, so I asked some bargirl if I could play some tunes from my ipod.
After an hour of playing and drunk conversations with random people, a guy came talking to me.
He turned out to be the owner and enthusiastically told me he loved the music. He welcomed me to come play there anytime, he'd pay me, make posters, etc.
The next day me and him met again, since I wanted to take this opportunity.
I was leaving saturday of that week and sadly fridaynight was fully booked, so we decided on wednesday.
Being in too short notice to publish the party and on a weekday, the bar would probably be a bit dead, but oh well..
Eventually it turned out to be a very good night.
Yang Yang sadly couldn't come, but surprisingly her artist friend came all by himself, although he barely speaks english.
We had the most fun, dancing a lot.
People came and went, as it goes on weeknights.
Still at periods after 3o clock the dancefloor was full, and from 5o clock onwards, there was a stable after-party crowd.
As it often goes, those last hours partying after sunrise were brilliant.
The party got very wild and drunk, everyone dancing on tables.
Appropiately, when the bar closed, this happened in the worst way, with discussions and a pretty entertaining girl-fight. A crowd was formed by some 30 estranged looking chinese people, on their way to work.

The last 2 days in Kunming I spent mostly with a nice friend I met that night. I had some more great times with the bar-owner, who invited me to return to Kunming later. He'd book me for a friday/saturday night dj-gig then.

Finally, Shanghai.
As I mentioned before, the reason to go to Shanghai that period was my father, who came all the way over for a 1-week citytrip.
We had a great time in a great city.
After 3 months of low budget travelling, the entire week in Shanghai felt vip-class.
Because of the expo, the city was a bliss to visit. It was clean, safe, had perfect public transport and everywhere were english-speaking 'volunteers' to help us with any problem.
We stayed at a nice hotel, spent our days walking through a surprisingly green and livable city, enjoyed regular coffee breaks and fine dining.
A visit to the art district was well worth it, where we visited lots of galeries. One day I was by myself, so I went back there to discover even more.
We spent 2 days visiting the expo. Luckily my father had arranged a tour of the pavillions via the Belgian pavillion. This meant we didn't have to queu, we just had to show up at the right pavillion at the right time.
At the most popular pavillions, waiting times could be as much as 5 hours, so we were very thankful.
Most pavillions went one of two ways. The first one was a bland PR-show about the country. In this category only Spain made a great impression, by a beautifully designed pavillion and a splendid flamenco-show. Switzerland also succeeded in bringing some mountain charm to Shanghai.
Others chose to stick to the expo theme 'Better city, better life'. This usually resulted in either irritating moralizing or a showcast of visions of an annoying naivite short of adressing any issue. The only truly memorable pavillion (to me) was the British one. Beautiful in concept and a work of art in rendering.
There were some great father & son talks and time was well spent.
All in all, a great time in Shanghai.

And then, for some reason, came a deep dive back to earth, by far the worst days travelling yet.
It started the day my father left, early in the morning. For the first time I felt really sick. Fever, headache, nauseous, exhausted, ...
Check-out was at noon, at which point I left the hotel feeling like a zombie.
Outside was a smoldering 30 degrees.
Feeling worse every second, before I could retreat to another (cheaper) hotel, I had to pick up my laundry.
The day before, my father and I had the brilliant idea to take my dirty clothes with us on a trip. Eventually in a random street, in the most chinese of neighborhoods, we gave it to a little store.
I was to pick up my clothes at 4o'clock.
Before this I sat in a shadowy bar, drinking water with closed eyes.
Eating was out of the question.
Finally I went to pick up my clothes, however as life has its pleasant surprises, the only metroline that went there was out of service that day.
I spent at least an hour walking up there, not counting a 15min break I took in some fastfood restaurant, not to eat, but to lay my head on the table for a while and trying to surpress my nausea.
Finally arriving at the laundry shop, I discovered that in my morning zombie state, I had thrown away the ticket of the shop.
Noone in the shop spoke a word of english, noone in the street looked vaguely like an educated chinese.
I tried communicating with the few words of chinese I knew, but they just replied me to wait there for another person to come, presumably the person who had kept shop the day before.
I just sat down there. After a while I felt so sick I needed to find a place to vommit. I mumbled some english 'back in 10min' and pointed somewhere, at which they looked cluelessly.
There was a park nearby, where I took my time to feel a little better.
Having found little energy I had left, I went back to the shop and gave it another try.
I asked pen and paper, and drew my clothes.
This lead to a pretty quick solution.
Now I just had a horrible walk back in front of me.
My bags were still at the Sofitel, but I thought about getting first to the other hostel, it was getting pretty late already.
Before my father left, I had found a cheap one and noted the details on a paper. However, since on hostelworld the chinese name/adress wasn't mentioned, the western writing was all I could show the taxi drivers. None of them could bring me there. Eventually it was getting even later, so I just went back to Sofitel.
I had spent five hours getting my laundry, walking endlessly, countless times I had to sit down and rest somewhere on the sidewalk or hurry to a nearby toilet.
In Sofitel I asked at the reception if they knew the place. Sure, no problem, I just had to get in the taxi.
I ended up at a YMCA hotel, with somewhat the same name as what I had on my paper, only with rooms that costed 80euros/a night.
I was finished, I needed to sleep, so I payed the price.
First time travelling I bought an expensive room, there was no way I could enjoy it.
I ordered my first meal of the day through room service, barely ate 3 spoons of rice and went to bed.

Next day, 5h30 off to the airport. I felt horrible as before. Showing my bad streak hadn't come to an end, in the morning taxi-ride I lost my ipod. Although I was wearing long trousers with deep pockets, somehow my ipod managed to fall out.
I felt nauseous again, and tried getting everything out of my system before boarding the plane.
After a bearable flight, sleeping mostly, I arrived in rainy Hong Kong.
Right after grabbing my bag, next to the Luggage transport band, I opened it to get my raincoat, discovering my shaving cream released its content all over my stuff. Although the last 2 days left me in a rather depressive mood, at least it got tragicomic by now. However, I spent an hour of cleaning at a toilet, which lately had become the most convenient place to hang out anyway.
I might add one more story to my list of misfortunes, which happened when arriving at the hotel in Hong Kong. As expected, it's an expensive city, so finding cheap accomodation is very difficult. As most people, I ended in the notorious Chungking Mansions.
As you'll see on the pictures, this truly is a monster. It's an enormous, ramshackle high-rise building, a ghetto of immigrants filled with hundreds of dirty hostels owned by indians, pakistani and people from countless different african nationalities.
I ended up in one of the few that offered dorm rooms. Twice the price you'd pay in mainland china, it offered half the comfort. First evening there was a great start, with some 8 cops entering the dorm for a drug addict. This guy was seriously tripping. His chin wet from saliva, he stood at random places in the room, doing some weird signals with his hands and staying in the same position for minutes at a time, eyes closed or looking with glassy eyes. To everyone's surprise the cops 'spoke' 10min with the guy, basically checking his papers and then just left, while leaving him.
Some girls were sleeping in the dorm and were really uncomfortable with him being there. When he became more restless and went over to other people's beds, falling down every two steps, the girls went talking to the owner. This middle-aged chinese guy was quite the picture, with two squint eyes and on his chin 6 hairs each 10cm's long. He only spoke basic english, enough however to convey his utter desinterest in the matter.
The eventual solution consisted of him taking the drugged guy's key and us locking the door of the dorm so the guy couldn't come back in.
Now I was a wreck and had a great nights sleep after this, however the girls say the guy knocked on the door all night, while they refused to let him in.

Im writing this now, hoping I had my portion for a while.
I felt really shitty, but here I am, in Hong Kong, so better make the best of it.
Anyhow, pretty soon another post where I'll tell some things about this remarkable city. Pics coming much earlier!

China: Kunming - Guilin - Yangshuo - Kunming

Fourweeks China, so many things to say..
Of those weeks, I spent the first 2 in Kunming and now after some travelling I'm here again.
It's a great city, one I could imagine myself living in.
I mostly spent my time here getting to know China through3 peopleI met.

The first one isthe dancer Haas and I met the night beforehe left.
She has a lot of friends here andwe went out to some great parties.

Secondly, online I came in contact with Yangyang,a young artist in Kunming.
She is a beginning painter and quite talented in fact.
We did some goingout and meeting cool people.
She's familiar with a 'scene' of western people living here in Kunming.
They are very active musically and organise a lot of intresting events.
However, the best time we had whengoing toa friend of her.
He's an established chinese artist, a very active painter. I brought a lot of belgian beers to his studio, where the 3 of us spent the day painting.
Sadly the next day he left to Beijing for an exhibition he hosted, so we didn't have an opportunity yet to repeat this.

Last but not least, I was very lucky to meet a girl named Tan Min.
She's a chinese girl speaking fluent english, being an English Language graduate.
When we met, she was in Kunming to apply for a chinese teaching study.
However, the very next day she planned on going home.
I reacted disappointed and I jokingly asked why she didn't stay longer in Kunming,to giveme a good start in my chinese learning.
Surprisingly she was very open to this idea. 15min later she was at the train station, returning her tickets.
So the next 10 days, every day I was learning 2,3 hours of chinese with her.

Now, why notsome wordsabout that language your grandchildren will be struggling with.
As expectedd, I'm finding it quite hard to learn. The vocabulary is exotic to say the least, and structurally chinese doesn't play by the same rules as most european languages do.
There's an upside though,surprisingly I'm finding chinese a very modern language.
A lot of rather archaic structures don't apply;such as cases (nominative, accusative, ...),gender (think french), regular/irregular verbs in the craziest tenses.
You simply place theset words one behind the other,and the exact meaningchanges according to context.
There's onebigcatch (you saw that one coming,right?): the measure words.
In western languagesthese make sense, e.g.two cups of water,1 piece of furniture,3 sheets of paper, ...
In Chinese however, every noun has its (often untranslatable) measure word.
It's not justthree books,four apples or onebus.
The measure word for that last one may vary though, wether you're talking about a bus you see somewhere on the street or the bus you have to take tomorrow to go somewhere.
Despite this, it's a pleasure to learn and a rewarding challenge while I'm here.

Back to my laoshi Tan Min.
Other than learning, we spentquite some timewalking through the city and I truly hadthe best time with her.
Sadly, all goodthings come to end. She had togo back to her hometown and isn't planning oncoming backfor a long time.

When school ended, I felt like travelling a bit more and wanted to see how it would be like on my own.
I decided to go toYangshuo, which is a world-famous, small city in a very unique landscape.
To get there, I took the night train to Guilin, the closest big city, from where a 2h-bus would take me to Yangshuo.
Being described in all guides as a very unattractive city, I planned to stay there 1 night.
Eventually I arrived in Yangshuo 5 days later.
What kept mein Guilin all this time,and a truly unique experience, was discovering the nightlife.

The bars are cool in their own right. Instead of just drinks and music, most bars also provide entertainment.
Everyfew songs, some girlscome dressed up, dancing around the bar.
Sometimes these are justfun dances, sometimes they amount to true shows, like a man singing about his lost love, while it's acted out how she got bitten by vampires.
However, this al happens in a really entertaining way, keeping up the pace.

The music can vary between crazy fun and unbelievable garbage.
The standard chinese music is a mix of Pop, Kitch and an electronic sound from some 10 years ago in Europe.
Let me illustrate:
http://www.u1city.com/upload/Sj21997/2009042047076917.mp3?stdfrom=3

What made the experience are the people though.
In Guilin are almost no tourists. The onesyou seeare passing-through to Yangshuo.
I didn't know anyone, but decided to take a look in some chinese bar anyway.
The music sounded decent, the bar looked good andhad anice atmosphere.
I decided to walk arounda bitto take a look, when suddenlyagroup ofgirls called me over.
As I discovered, for some reason in China it's very common for girls to go out in group.
No guys around them, barely any guys coming up to them to flirt.
Theybarely spoke English, but immediately offered me a drink.
Ihappily stayedanother while and figuredI got lucky not having to stand alone.
I didn't.
For the rest of the evening whenIwent to the toilet or justlooked awayfrom where I was standing, people called me over.
Some spoke a little english, however all were equallyelated to have a foreigner joining them.
When they really didn't speak any english,we playedthese fun drinking games they love.
Incessantly they handed out drinks. It'sfunny how they order them.
Instead ofordering another beerafter finishing the previous one, they absolutely love buying as many beers as possible and having a massive amount stashedunder the table.
To have a cold beer is clearly of less importance.
One of these nights, I ended up in a KTV bar. This japanese karaoke concept is wildly popular in China.
Most often groups of young people order their own rooms.
I was walking alone back to the hotel, when some people standingoutside smokinga cigarette invited me in their room.
Inside was mayhem. Insanely loud andhard music, dancing crying girls, passed out people on the couches, wild dancing next to it, aguy trying to kiss me, ..
I stayedthere 2 hours and although none of them spoke english, I had incredible fun.

During the days, I did some great trips around town.Guilin was agreat preparation to Yangshou.
Although the nature is incomparable, the way Guilin floats around those epic mountains is beautiful.
My best trip by far was to a park right in the center of the city. There wasincredible nature, wild monkeysand a lot of opportunities to go off track and start climbing around.
But then you'd get to the top and see the city you forgot about, sprawling all around you.

Finally Yangshuo then.
As you'll see on the pictures, there's no overstating the unique scenery it's surrounded by.
Being some hours in the city, I unexpectedlymeta guy I had a quick conversation with some days before.
He himself had met some austrian girls.
Along with them, we spenta nice 2 days, biking around the countryside, eatingdeliciousfoodat home withalocal lady and dancing on stage at the bars. Travel stories and experiences were exchanged. Their trip thusfar had been great, yet the girls (all single) weren't lyrical about the boys. As one of the girls funnily remarked:
All western boys in China are moreinterested in chinese girls, yet so are the chinese boys.
Besides, other than girls, often these chinese guys are preoccupied doing something else! They go out togetherandarevery much into dancing, moving in a wayin Belgium you'd probably only see in gay-bars.
When there's a pole in the bar (which there very often is), they'll be hanging around it.
Quite often they arestrangely touchy with other boys,it's not uncommonthey suddenly put their hands on you, or come dance uncomfortably close.

After those 2 daysall of themleft, while Istayed another 2, partly because of the truly wonderful hostel I stayed at.
One of the travelling highlights yet happenedin these days.
One night, around 4, 5o clock,everything closed in a quiet city, me and someone I met that dayended upskinny dippingin the river through Yangshuo. (http://travel-china-tours.com/images/guilin3.jpg)
Between the black water and sky, with those dark mountains looming over us, it wasa moment that shouldn't have stopped.

Since the frequency of my writing isn't all that, a little breakdown of what's coming up.
Now I'm back in Kunming, heading to the towns of Dali and Shangri-La, close to the Tibetan border
Tibet probably won't be an option, since the 21st I'm due back in Kunming.
The next day I'm taking the airplane to Shanghai.
There my father will make the guest appearance of thecentury for one week.
After this, Hong Kong is next on schedule.

Central Vietnam - China: Kunming

Long time since another update.
Finally arriving in Central Vietnam, sadly the time had come to send back the bikes to HCM. Wedidn't spend a lot of time inthis region, but instead opted for animmediate night train to Hanoi. This city was actually quite disappointing compared to Ho Chi Minh. Far too much tourism. Probably our hostel wasn't in the ideal location either.The famous lakewas quite beautiful and we found some relaxing places to hang out.

Nevertheless, after a few days we were happy to leave Hanoi. In our hostel Haas had met a polish girl Ewa, who decided to accompany us on the nightbus to Sapa. This small village is located in a beautiful mountaineous regionin Northern Vietnam. A lot of ethnic minorities still live here. In Sapa they spend their time by walking next to foreigners, making some polite conversation and eventually asking to buy something from them. 'Make me happy?' They range from young to very old. It's funny how they keep walking hundreds of meters next to you, but in arather nice way. Once their salespitch comes, it's short and not all too persistent and bothersome. They don't look really poor either, all wearing really nice traditional clothes.

The second day we were there, we went on a biking trip through the mountains. Finally the skies had cleared up again, driving through truly beautiful scenery. At one point however, 2 wild dogs appeared on the road. They were barking really agressively and started to run along us. Quite scary actually. One of the dogs finallymanagedto biteme right above my left foot. It wasn't very deep, but enough for it to bleed. We continued the trip, although I was worrying a bit about Rabies. We went on a little further, to a waterfall with barely any water in it. When we drove back, another accident happened. When passing some cars driving in typical crazy Vietnamese style, Ewa slipped while trying to avoid them and fell down. She ended up with a really nasty cut in her elbow. We stopped someone to take her to the hospital, while Haas and I drove back with the bikes. Arriving at the village, we went to meet her, since I also wanted to getmy wound checked out. However, the only hospital in this neighborhood looked really poor, quite dirty, rooms filled with people and the doctor herself couldn't speak any english. After some phonecalls with a doctor at home, it turned out Sapa lays in a highrisk zone for rabies. Interestingly, the time you have after a bite from an infected animal depends on the distance from the wound to your brain. Slowly it goes through your body and when finally arriving it is almost always lethal. However, since the dog ( luckily ) had bitten me so low, I had some time left, treatment within 10days was advisable. I decided to wait for China to get treated, in a cleaner hospital where someone might even speak some english.

Next day we were planning to leave,after a great last night in Sapa. Walking through the streets, some small local girls came up to us trying to sell somestuff. One of these was a a bit older, 14y old andeasily one of the brightest girls I ever met. Just from contact with tourists, she had build up an impossible english vocabulary. When I told her I wasn't interested in buying anything, this girl happily stayed with us, to talk and joke around. Before I knew it,me and this girlwere joking about the afterlife, imagining how next time it might be me trying to sell her something on the streets. We were talking for 20 minutes at least, having lots of fun, laughing out loud,really teasing each other. How creative, smart and cool this girl was, incredible.
After 1 month not being a single timetempted to buy some crappy, overpriced touristic souvenir, I felt the time had come. When I took my wallet, she started going through her stuff and gave me 2 bracelets. I wanted to pay her, but she didnt accept it. It was a present. I couldnt believe this girl. I said it was too much, and after repeatedly trying to pay her, I told her I'dgladly accept the one silk bracelet as a present,but give herthe other 'silver' one back. This she didn't accept either, I couldn't give it back since it wasn't mine, it was a present from her to the girl at home I would decide to give it to..
Obviously I left her mynumber to callme when she's 18. (ahum, this is a joke)

Early next morning, off to China then! We had no problems passing the border, arriving at the small border town Heiku. We immediately took a bus to Kunming, the province capital. At this town Haas and I would spend our (for now) last days travelling together. While he'd like to keep up the current pace of travelling around, I'm keener on settling for a while,getting to know some locals andlearn chinese.
We stayedata very nice hostel at the center of the city, The Hump. One of the better places we slept during our travelling. Nice andspacious rooms/dorms, a very friendly staff, a pool table and a bigbalcony with a great view over the skyline.We spent our days discoveringKunming, a very enjoyablecity to walkand bike around.It's a rich city, even to european standards. You can find here every single western clothes shop, Carrefour (with Duvel and Leffe), Walmart, Apple stores, Imax 3D cinema, ... Other than that beautiful parks,filled withpeople dancing in various styles as a way of sport,lakes, big car-free lanes andall that surrounded by skyscrapers home to this city's 6 million residents. There are both a lot of students and artists in this town. One day we visited a conservatory and luckily stumbled upona pair of chinese students doing their final repetition for a concert planned a few days later.A trip to the Yunnan History Museum was much less remarkable.

One surpriseafterarriving in China is the absolute lack of English speaking skills. Words liketelephone, water, bus,left & right, where?/when?,...are completely alien to them. The most basic task of ordering or askinganything is almost impossible without using chinese words. However, and this is the surreal part, there's not a lack of english. On the contrary, english is everywhere. Every store, restaurant, hotel, library etchas its name translated inenglish up front.Streetsigns, toilet- andexitsigns, .. all inchineseand english. Yet ask a random person forthe toilet, he won't understand you. Use any of these english translatednames to anyone, noresponse. The immensely annoying thing is that you'restuck with using these translations, since chinese signs give no indication whatsoever on how to say a wordout loud(forget about Pinyin, absolutely nowhere to be seen). The only option left is showing a paper with chinese signs to people, which is exactly how I got sent around finding a Rabies treatment. Person after person scribbling down some more signs, while pointing me somewhere else.
The people themselvesare friendly enough, and any chinese effort is answerred by enthusiastic smiling. While losingyourway, friendly people automatically pop up and guide you. This however didn't relieve me from literally having to act out a dog.

The last night beforeour goodbye's, Haasand Ihad atruly great evening. We played a drinking game witha chineseboy and girl. The girl was a pole dancer, while the guy was an aspiring rapper, whose english wasweak at best, except for a thorough knowledge of hip-hop slang. A really nice and good boy, but then he used these insaneexpressions, hilarious. We connected our ipods to play our own music and got really really drunk.
A great reminder of some of the other great evenings we had together.

On to the next part of our journey then, best of luck Haas!

HCM - Quang Ngai

Another update on our adventures.
In short, 2 weeks ago we took a 2-day trip down south to the Me Kong delta, returned for the weekend to Ho Chi Minh and are now driving north.
First day, our drive to Me Kong wasn't all that great. For the entire 90 minutes drive, we were surrounded by a variety of small industry and dirty stores selling everything imaginable. No beautiful countryside to be seen. Then we arrived in a small village called My Tho, which was equally disappointing. For some reason Vietnamese like to fill their streets with 100s of identical shops, selling exactly the same thing. They are very comparable to the nightshops in Belgian cities in what they sell and how they look, one annoying difference being the lack of fridges. We did some walking around town, saw some nice houses and a beautiful lake. It's clear to see a lot of money is being spent on making these towns tourist-worthy.
The next day was much better. We first made a boat trip on the Me Kong. This river is one of the biggest in the world, so has a very wide delta, filled with islands and wetlands. The boat trip took us across the river through a beautiful tropical landscape. We were lucky enough to be the only two passengers on the boat and had some non-verbal quality time with the captain, which means trying to talk to each other, failing completely and ultimately drinking a beer together while smiling. Eventually we arrived in Ben Tre, a bit further down south. Again, to me there's nothing charming about these small towns. We decided to rent some bikes to drive around. We drove away from the city center, looking for some nature, and boy, were we rewarded. Very small roads took us through forests, open fields, rivers, ...
Away from all the tasteless plastic and merchandise frenzy, finally a beautiful countryside appeared, where people lived in the most incredible surroundings.
Back to Ho Chi Minh, the city we already came to love. We met our local friends for some traditional food and bowling. The last night we had a great party. Altogether we spent a very enjoyable time in HCM, and as a city so rapidly evolving and turning westwards, it was a great gateway to Asia.
Finally we decided to head north, since there were only 2 weeks left to cover the 2000 kilometers to the chinese border. We had the great idea to rent 2 motorcycles for the first half of this journey. What a joy!
First on our schedule was the mountain city Da Lat. Very enjoyable drive and a pleasant city. We spent there only one full day, then continued our drive. We had heard there was a partly unfinished highway that could take us to Nha Trang, the party town of Vietnam. We were promised beautiful sights, with barely any traffic, since the road was so new and still under construction.
Now imagine this. The two of us on our motorcycles, driving without any traffic on the most perfect, european style highway. Straight through the jungle.
Surreal can't cover it. At one point, many kilometers into the jungle, we saw local kids playing naked in a river, looking at us as though we were aliens. One can only guess how soon this highway will completely alter its surroundings, and if and when it will turn into one long stretch of shops, bars, hotels, ...
Truly sad, but we can't complain since it gave us the opportunity to see some of the most beautiful nature sights we ever saw.
2 worlds couldn't be further apart than the one we drove through and the one we arrived at. Nha Trang: a beach, tourists and parties. Lazy time. We bought some books, played beach soccer, enjoyed the (huge) waves and partied.
Then the weather got really bad, so we decided to move on.
The last 2 days we spent driving 400kilometers through seriously shitty weather, cold and rainy, while passing some of the most beautiful beaches of Vietnam. That's life.
Next up. Tomorrow we go visit My Lai, the small village home to one of the biggest massacres of the Vietnam war. Later we arrive at the big cities of central Vietnam. Probably we won't spend much time there but instead take a night-train to North Vietnam. A few days Hanoi and then into the mountains again, for some more rural Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh

So, first week in Vietnam! We'restaying in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon City. Hard to describe this place. On first impression it looks really poor and busy. Noisy street vendors, an impossible chaos of motorcycles and people crossing roads seemingly randomly, people sitting on their little part of the sidewalk all day.But after a while, another city appears. Most buildings arein bad shape and look quite shady, but go inside and you can find the most beautiful bars and restaurants. Many streets look authentically asian, but then suddenly a glamorous Mercedes Vendorship lays right in the middle. At night flocks of men in suits and ladies all dressed up cruise around the city on their motorcycles, somehow reminding me of Italy. Classy coffee barsare almost as abundant as the traditional Vietnamese Pho restaurants.

The locals are friendly. As mentioned earlier, street vendors can be quite pesky, as well as motorcycle taxi drivers shouting out from across the street, clapping their hands and waving. Luckily not all of them are as persistent. We had some good conversations with local people. The most difficult part is finding people who are able to speak English. To this end, we went to a local university and met some cool students who took us to nice places around the city.

Another night, the two of us were strolling around the city, not entirely sober, when a random guy offered us a ride on his bike. We started joking around and saying silly stuff, this guy turned out to be really cool and eventually we offered him a drink instead of taking the ride. Sitting in the park, we talked about the difficult workingconditions in Ho Chi Minh and the behaviour of the police.The policy towards local people seems to be 'One strike and you're out'. Poor people falling without a job orwho get accused of a crime, especially involving tourists, are sent away.We've heard this from several people and walking around the city at night it's noticeable. The city feels completely safe and the only people living on the street are the ones lying on their motorbikes. As these also provide their employment, they are allowed to stay.

The food is delicious, our stomachs need a little more time to adjust though. One evening we went to a great restaurant eating seafood along with the students. Although a great meal, the next day both of us were having some severe intestinal drama. Probably the fact that we drank copious amounts of wine, mojito and tequila didn't help either. However, the next morningwe had booked a trip which involved getting up at 7am for a 1h30 busdrive. The entire drive both of us were sitting in agony, eyes closed concentrating on keeping the food down, but not too far down, sinceall the way downthings were functioning equally badly. Keeping it right in the middle...

Very interesting excursion though, we visited the Cu Chi tunnels. I feel like I'm already writing a book here,so for more information do visit Wikipedia, it's worth it. In short, these tunnels were used as hiding place by the Viet Cong. Since above ground was continuously being bombed andburned, they used these as their shelter for years. One can't imagine life in there. Most impressive was the ingenuity required to divert the smoke, deal with intruders, etc.We both did 100 meters of these tunnels and were truly exhausted. The tunnels are really small and mostly pitch-black dark.It's impossible to walk in them, even bended over. Probably the fastest way to go through them would be on hands and knees, but for fancy Europeans unwilling to dirty their hands and clothes, the only other option was a funny yet exhausting duck-like walk.

Lastly, going out is great. A lot of cool bars, easily comparable to European ones. There is a slightly different atmosphere though. Other than the usual young people going there, sex tourism and prostitution is more prevalent than I expected. Bars are filled with people of varying motivations, similar to the hairsaloons of which many are not exactly subtle about offering additional services.We went to a really cool bar to meet other tourists, a local Celtica,but when going outtill the wee hours, most of themen left with a paid companion, surprisingly even guys our own age. When walking around at night, often a motorbike stops next to you with someone asking you along.This may or may not be a slightly nightmarish transgender creaturewhose voice in now way matches the looks.

Next up then. This is almost our last day in Ho Chi Minh. Tomorrowwetake a2 daytrip to the Mekong delta, then we return one day here. After this wetravel up north to the tropical beaches. Pictures on facebook btw, soon more coming!