'chicha' is malay for gecko.

I am back in civilisation. After 10 days of camping and being feral in general, I have ended my trip with G.A.P. Adventures in the wild and am now in Windhoek Airport, Namibia, waiting for my flight out to Cape Town. I've been in Africa for 3 weeks now. I can guarantee you that my body and mind are running on African time, however, and I feel like I've been here for 3 months instead. Traveller's fatigue is settling in, yet so is traveller's addiction. Let's start with...


A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. After walking for 3 hours in a torrential downpour of epic proportions in a place that wasn't even raining, I managed to score a few pics of my drenched self in front of the mighty Falls thanks to a late chance encounter with some Chinese teachers on holiday from working in Harare. Nice to see some other Asian faces around, especially given the general Asian attitude towards Africa and black people.

Vic Falls, the town, is TINY. And dull. Yet the people are fantastic. Although these people aren't starving and naked and have ribcages poking out like you see on the telly for World Vision, the lack of money, jobs, and food is pretty shocking. Along the road, I was picked up by many locals for a stroll along the streets (albeit with ulterior motives, ie. trading USD for worthless Zimb Dollars; luring me to tours), where I got a fairly detailed insight from them about the state of their countries. One woman called Mugabe 'The Devil'. Another said that last year he was 'starving' and is grateful that there is at least SOME money in the stores and countries. But 'some', I mean, LITERALLY, $1 and $5 USD notes. And like, maybe 5 or 10 of them each in a till. It's bloody terrible. You go into the supermarket thinking things have improved so much here coz they actually have food in the store...until you actually realise it's not really food, but more like aisles of jam with no fresh bread to spread it on, or rotten vegetables that people scavange for or endless bags of potato chips with no nutritional value whatsoever in them. There were two petrol stations which were completely abandoned because there's absolutely no business and no money.

In fact, Vic Falls kinda felt like a semi ghost town. Although there are people, there's no activity going on. People stand still or wander aimlessly around doing nothing at all. No wonder people are freaking chasing me down the street trying to sell me their curios or asking me to swap my dirty socks for their crafts. I'm not joking, this American duo I met actually traded their wet, smelly socks from the Falls for a fully carved wooden chess set.

This tour guide is called Felicity. I met her on the street, we chatted, we walked to town together. She earns $10 USD a month in commission, there's not a single soul residing in her hotel, and she supports 3 children/adopted orphans by selling home-grown tomatoes. When I asked her what possibly keeps people happy here when there's not all that much to be happy about, she simply said 'God keeps us happy.' Wow, that's faith for ya!


So I have another legendary story to add to my 'Freak Attractor' list, that includes Flying Nerdo Boy, Library Boy, Beijing Cloth Stalker and Revolving Sugar Daddy. I like to call this guy 'Chicken-Lickin' Retard'. Coz he really was both these things. There are these two eateries in town that dominate the so-called food industry over there - The Pizza Inn and The Chicken Inn. They're right next to each other. So one day, I'm so desperate for pizza that I go to the Pizza Inn, only to find out the machine's broken down and there is no cheese left. So what initially turns out to be a 1 hr wait turns into a 4 hr wait, and Chicken Boy decides to park himself on my table without asking and proceed to munch his drumstick right in front of my face. All whilst trying to hit on me. Charming. Especially when the only thing I can see is the chicken meat mushing in your mouth and the oil all over your face and hands. Gross. The guy takes about 2 hours to polish off his chicken in my face because he simply won't give up on trying to get my number. I actually got really mad for the first time during my trip. I was screaming "NO. N.O. Don't you UNDESTAND what 'NO!!!!!' means????!!! STOP ASKING ME FOR MY NUMBER, I ALREADY TOLD YOU I DON'T HAVE A MOBILE HERE, NO NO NO NO NO, NONONONONONO. GO AWAY!!!" For some reason, my anger just made me seem even MORE endearing to him, and he proceeded to ask me if "Is it because I'm African?" as to the reason why I was rejecting his advances for 2 hours. No, you IDIOT, I don't care that you're black. You're just a RETARD and I want your oily chicken fingers out of my sight!

It's another road trip for me. This time to the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg aka The Dragon Mountains bordering Lesotho. The Rough Guide lists this as the #1 spot to visit in South Africa because of its hiking trails, waterfalls, gorges and Bushmen rock art. Not gonna lie, it's pretty darn gorgeous, even with the smoke from the purposely lit fire breaks hovering over the mountains and clouding the view.


Wanna know why it's known as 'The Dragon Mountains'? Apparently the tops/ridges of the mountains (like in the left pic) remind people of the shape of dragons' backs, and in the morning, the mist that settles over the top is reminiscent of dragons' breath. And ALSO apparently, J.R.R. Tolkien was inspired by this landscape when he wrote The Hobbit/LOTR...but we all know that's a bunch of sensationalised tourist bull since he left SA before he could probably remember anything!

In order to go UP the Drakensberg, you need to drive up the Sani Pass. It's pretty much an endless winding road up the mountain face that ends in the gateway to Lesotho. You NEED a 4WD to get up there, I saw some 2WD attempting and it looked painful. I'm surprised they did not roll off the side of the cliff. Apparently, nobody has died going up in vehicles on this mountain face is 15 years.


We hiked to the top of the mountains and ate lunch. And I managed to fall flat on my face in snow and bury myself.

Sometimes you meet people in life who make you realise how insignificant and superficial your dreams are, and how selfish or self-involved you have become. The Swazi people are amazing. I was wrong about them. They have been so accomodating and kind that I have no idea what I was afraid of or why I was worried in the first place, especially compared to South Africa. The following people made my stay in Swaziland so wonderful that I can now call them friends and will miss them and their beautiful country dearly.


He is 23, an orphan with 5 siblings, and knows more about world politics and the Taliban than me. He is most proud of finishing high school and hopes to go to university one day. He taught me basic Siswati so that I could communicate with the rural village folk, and hiked 30 minutes each way up the valley to make sure I got to the bus station and home safely every time I went out to town. His dream is to open up his own backpackers or campsite one day to educate people about the Swazi lifestyle and culture and meet more foreigners. He believes that as long as he has hope, he can do anything.


I stayed at Myxo's place. Berenger and Stephanie are a French couple who I travelled with. Linda (yes, that really is his name) was our driver and guide in the village. Myxo runs the KaPhunga community village in the hills of Swaziland, where he established his own homestead and pre-primary school, and is in the middle of building a clinic to improve the health care system for the rural citizens. Medical and other health science students, please look at this. Maybe you will consider doing your practical/clinical there.

Fortune is the village's pre-primary school teacher. She's only 19 and has a proper job. We ate sugarcane together on the doorstep of their hut and talked for 3 hours about culture and life watching the sunset over the hill. I am the first Asian that they have ever met in their life, but they didn't seem to know any different. To them, I looked like just another white person. Or perhaps another French.


Super confident, super charming and just adorable. He's a soccer superstar and he likes people to know that. He asked a bazillion questions about France, politics and soccer and prepared our food and bedding for us.



I love them SO much. There is an innocence, purity and hope about them unseen in the Western world. I never felt unwelcome, unsafe or unworthy of their attention, interest or affections. Happy smiles all around. Sometimes it was crazy and complete chaos. This school had never seen tourists before and were screaming when I arrived. They wanted to 'love' me, touch me, shake my hand, have their picture taken and have my attention.


I taught these guys for 30 minutes about Australia and my life. They gasped when we revealed our ages. I think it is because the life expectancy is only 35-40 or so here. So they were super shocked to find out that I have grandparents exceeding 80 and nearly 100. Their teacher is the one in the leather jacket. SUPER nice, SUPER welcoming and SUPER sweet. Too bad he is not looking at the camera. This guy sees tourists every week, but you can tell he never tires of them and is always genuinely happy to meet new people.


That's not her full name. A Swazi model and my Durban angel. We met on the long distance combi from Manzini to Durban, 7 hours of bumpy hell in the back, only arriving at 7pm at night in the gritty city. I was shit scared of Durban but this girl took me under her wing, walked me around the town in the dark of night and made sure I got home safely. The next day, we went to uShaka Marine World, chased some Doris and Nemos, bought some super fudge and ate a fantastic place called Moyos where we got face painted and African dance entertainment before I had to leave for Lesotho.


She has been the kindest individual I have met in a very very long time. I mean, who would be so nice to a complete stranger? I know I wouldn't. She is, in a word, amazing, and I will miss her dearly.

I am in the middle of nowhere. Not gonna lie, I'm scared. Sort of. Manzini is like a zoo. The streets are chaotic and the markets are vast, but there's absolutely no organisation, no rules and LOTS OF GODDAMN LEERERS here. Not kidding, I've been hit on by no less than 15 African men and I've been in Swaziland less than 8 hours. What is it with them and going "How are you??" just like in that stereotypical African style? Even the women are leering at me here. So much for trying to avoid attention, I've seen perhaps two Caucasians in this whole town so far, and they don't even count coz they're Americans, not white Africans. I spotted another Asian guy about 30 seconds ago outside Nandos (go figure, guess where I was eating too?) but other than that...I'm a lone ranger.

It's Day 1 and everything has gone wrong already. Did my long haul Perth->Dubai->Johannesburg on Monday, I'd forgotten how painful 20 hours of flying was. Checked in at Road Lodge at 10pm, had to get up again at 4am to catch my 6:50am flight to Manzini. Good lord, you should have seen the plane. It was freaking TINY. Like as baby as you can get. I don't have a photo of it as all my baggage was stored away in the cabin in some closet (I don't even know how 16 ppl's luggage fit in there...) but here's one I gacked off someone's Flickr:


It looked like one of those fighter jets you see in those war movies with those two fans powering the plane into the air. TINY. The beauty of it all was that nothing compares to going on a flight at sunrise. Japan, land of the rising red sun? I think not. The sun that rose this morning was an amazing blood red, I couldn't believe my eyes. And because the plane was so tiny and the flight so short, the view was pretty fantastic from the window. I can't describe how pretty it was to fly JUST under the clouds and be able to see the African landscape below, all whilst the sun was rising. When we finally ascended into and above the cloud coverage, it reminded me of Skrat in Ice Age, when he goes to Acorn Heaven and see all these fluffy clouds and sunlight and golden gates. Sounds pretty corny, I know, but so true. I highly recommend a flight in one of those planes, despite the HORRIBLE turbulence.

Anyway, when I finally landed, I got pretty much the same treatment as in Joburg. Only Asian, only foreigner, asked a bazillion questions about what I'm doing in Swaziland, and stopped numerous times by different peeps asking the same old mouldy questions. Do I seriously look like a terrorist? The way these people react to me, you'd think they'd never seen an Asian in their life. In fact, I wouldn't doubt if that were true. The title of this blog entry refers to a dumb African lady who kept hollering at me with that phrase while I was navigating my way OUT of the nightmarish bus 'station'. I threw her a dirty look. You know the one.


My taxi did not arrive on time. In fact, I don't even know if it came. All I know is that for the next 2 hours, I befriended a naturalised female Canadian originally from Swaziland, who was in the same predicament as me - failed pick up, and not wanting to take a taxi from the dodgy airport. After numerous attemps at using the crappy payphone, the lovely lady finally got picked up by her extended family and I was left alone at the airport wondering what the hell had gone wrong. Some airport people who had been ignoring me for 2 hours straight finally started asking me some questions. Turns out that the landlines were down all over the country since 8am in the morning, and that it was impossible to contact anyone via phone. FML!!!! No bloody wonder! A nice man working for AVIS led me to a 'trustworthy' taxi, and the elderly driver and I set off...on a totally blind path. This Myxo's Backpackers doesn't exactly have an address, you see. They're based on farmland in the middle of a valley. We finally found the place, I'm being taken care of the owner's half brother while we wait for the owner to come back, and now I am safe. I hope.


I need to take the public combi back to my accomodation which has no visible bus stop. Fingers crossed this all goes well. Pray for my safety.

Part II of my holiday throughout China...I apologise in advance coz this is uber-long, but you guys keep bugging me for an update!!! So here it is!

Xishuangbanna Region, Yunnan
This region is located in the southern most part of Yunnan province in South West China, and is on the border of Myanmar and Laos. I had heard a great many things about this place but couldn't help feeling that it was rather overrated. The Lonely Planet wasn't exactly the greatest help for this either, someone REALLY needs to update that section. Anyway, the main pitstop for this place was Jinghong, which is apparently exactly like Bangkok. To get to Jinghong, we took an overnight sleeper bus from Kunming. OMG. When I say that this bus smelt like feet, I mean it smelt like F-E-E-T. Phooooooaaaarrrrhhh!! It STUNK like madness! I'm not sure which is worse now - having an armpit stuffed in your face full of B.O. or being stuck in a bus having to sleep for 10 hours with the constant smell of "Hong Kong foot" lingering around your whole body. I think my poor nose is immune to all types of Chinese smells now.

 


The interesting thing about the Xishuangbanna Region is that people down here DO NOT look like your typical Chinese person. They are really dark skinned and the bone structure and facial features are all different. Not to mention the dialects. The majority of the people we met, especially in the villages, could not speak Putonghua, so once again it was an amusing case of the "Chicken and Duck" commuication technique.


Yeah, so I had to pee. On the highway. So shoot me.


 
 
 
 

The first place we decided to go to was the Elephant Valley just north of Jinghong. The valley is a huge place but rather touristic. The fact that we only saw 2 elephants in the middle of the night in bad lighting bathing in the river as opposed to the supposed 40 that live in the valley makes me think the LP is telling a whole bunch of fibs. I mean, we saw more elephant shit than elephants in that valley. The cable car ride took 40 minutes and took us between and above the canopies of the trees...my god, I was really scared. I really need to get over this fear of heights. Stayed in a treehouse (yeah, that's right!) in the valley, but suffered eating dismal food and surviving on fruit (but it was nice). The water, on the other hand, was FUCKING FREEZING. I think it was the river water. We saw an additional 5 circus elephants performing and I was a bit shocked at how brutal the Chinese trainers were to them. They have these horrible picks that they use to bash the elephant when the elephant doesn't do a routine correctly or comes down too early when it's tired. Just WHAM! *smack!* Poor Dumbo. :( Elephants also have humongous penises. Kinda gross.
Next stop was Galanba, a one hour ride out of Jinghong, and we rented a bike there to cycle all the way to a remote village in the hills. When we got there, we were warmly greeted by a local teacher there, and talked about various things like city life vs. country life, Beijing, our studies and our home countries. There were a lot of kids running aorund us too, being very shy but camera friendly. And pigs galore. I <3 pigs. I do NOT heart bikes though. My bike tire decided to die on me on the way back, so I hitch hiked a motorbike and winged it back to the bike shop. Yeaaaaah, Chi-Chi rode a motorbike!!! Bloody awesome! And bloody awesome that Chinese people can figure out how to attach a huge bike to the back of a motorcycle and not have it fall off! Brilliant!

   
   

   

   

Damenglong was a nightmare. 4 hours out of Jinghong and the whole ride was a bumpy mess. Bumpy is an understatement. More like it felt like we were driving over a whole pile of jagged rocks. So much so that I bumped my head about 5 times on the bus roof and I had to hold onto the seat in front of me for dear life. The road is in such bad condition at the moment because they are reconstructing it to connect directly to Myanmar. And so, it was incredibly hard to bike on as well. We managed to make it to a village nearby but then left pretty early because getting around was just too hard. It was also muddy. Not only did my shoes smell like shit after that, but also, I think I smelt like shit. So I suppose it's really fitting now when people say the toilet is actually my best friend.

   
 
The drunk man who managed to sleep through some of the horrendous ride. o_O

Xiding is full of nothing. And I'm not joking. The so called town is spans less than the length of Murray St mall in Perth, so you can imagine how bad it is. In fact, it's probably shorter than the length of London Court arcade in Perth. o_O We stayed in a local woman's place, with no toilet or showers and absolutely no transport at all. So we walked all the way to the windy villages. And guess who we found? The hilarious drunk guy who was on the bus next to us on the way to Xiding. This dude had been insisting on taking me out to "wanr" (play) in Xiding, as if it was some big party district...well, I managed to find him in his little hut in the little village, playing with his wife and little daughter (still drunk, of course). He definitely comes from a modest background, so I chuckled a bit at the memory of him promising to show us a good time in Xiding as if it were the Sanlitun of Beijing. It was awesome though to see him, as well as the other villagers, in this type of environment. So not what I am used to and just surreal. You gotta imagine if these people know of the outside world and if they do, how they get to it. I mean, once they do, do they freak or do they embrace it or do they even believe it's real? It's a very humbling feeling to see people still living in these primitive conditions and yet still enjoying their lives. I really appreciate being a city girl but these kinda trips seriously open your eyes to a whole new world.

   
 


Menghai was full of nothing and just a point we passed through in order to get to Menghun. We went to Menghun PURELY for the Sunday market, which we had heard was the bomb of the town. My god. It really is the bomb. But not for the faint hearted. So I now warn those animal lovers to read and look no further on my journal, because:
1) I DO NOT want any "you cruel animal hater, those Chinese people are barbaric, how can you post these pictures up?!" comments.
2) I'm sparing you grief. Seriously. If you're an animal lover, you'll feel sick. Coz even I did, and I HATE animals. But it's fascinating all in one.

So do you want to know what a butcher (a Chinese one at least) really does for a living? He does this:


   

Back in Jinghong. Thank God. Don't get me wrong, in retrospect, Xishuangbanna was an AMAZING experience. But during the time we were there, it was tough, both mentally and physically, and at times I just wondered why the heck was I interested in seeing these places. But now I realise it has really enriched my understanding of Chinese culture and put the bratty princess in myself through challenges I would have never considered before. I was ignorant before, and I still feel that I am, but I think I am well on my way to some sort of wisdom and maturity now. Travelling (the REAL kind, not the holiday type imo) is not just about seeing beautiful cities and architecture and the touristic spots all the time. It's about really connecting with people, the culture, the forgotten places and learning something new about yourself at the end of it. Something that will change you in a positive way or give you life experience.

Hainan Island
Definitely the place for lazy mofos. And I was a lazy mofo here. After 9 exhausting days trekking, biking and bussing non stop in Xishuangbanna, I just lazed on the beach for 3 days straight in Sanya. As a result, we got heinously sunburnt. I was itching like crazy. Hainan Island is also a rip off for veges, which I just don't understand. And the meat is cheap there, but that doesn't make sense either. And Hainan Chicken is toooo juicy. That's not a good thing. I like my chicken dry AND I actually like some MEAT. Hainan Chicken is allllll yucky skin. And oily. Gross.


*will insert pics here when I upload them*

Hong Kong
Fuck, I love this place. Every subsequent time I go, I get more attached, and yet when I count how many times I've been there, it's only been twice, and 14 days in total. WTF?! I need to stay away from this addictive holiday destination.

So I met my friend's hoard of HKBU exchange friends down in HK, who had all happened to come to HK at the same time for...whatever reason, something to do with internships and work and holidays or whatnot. Anyway...jieshao yixiar:

Chris - cool German guy with the cutest cutest CUTEST blond locks. OMG, I love curly hair. He's also a bit of a comic and a paparazzi. And also obsessed with hiking.
Jacqueline - very pretty French girl from Paris, with the most gorgeous dark brown wavy hair ever. Oh I am jealous. And very nice too. And sounds pretty awesome when she mixes her French and her Chinese dialect together. Speaks extremely fast English though (but it's excellent at the same time). For the amount of times she had to save me from falling on that cliff in the New Territories (more about this later), I should give her a gold star.
Kwan - an authentic Honkie! And oh so cute! He's a teacher and very sweet indeed.
Ray - another authentic Honkie, who probably blinked at me in disbelief too many times to count because of my fast talking. Whoops. And also my other lifesaver on the tretcherous cliff. He's got amazing English and Mandarin too, like Kwan.
Junit (sp?) - a German girl who had come to HK to start an internship and does awesome makeup. And agrees with me that Shanghai is not that great.
Janice - HK girl obsessed with Germany, learns German and is going to Europe soon for 3 months to be with her Austrian bf (who obviously speaks German), and amongst other things, to learn German. I can't exactly classify her as a "banana", can I? Because it's European culture she's obsessed with, not Western. Anyway, all in all, very talkative and friendly indeed.
Ryan - Janice's brother and oh-so-quiet!

So apart from manic shopping and gluttinous eating, I went to Lama Island and went hiking up crappy rocks and a waterfall in the New Territories. Lama Island was so-so, a nice getaway from the hustle and bustle and bright lights of HK, but also not so interesting. And there's a so-called "beach" on Lama Island but uhhhh...I like to call it more of a "cove". ;) Quite clearly, I'm an Aussie beach babe snob.
 

   
 
To-die-for tofu meal.


The hiking in the New Territories occured in the few hours before my flight from Shenzhen and I almost thought I'd miss it with us getting lost everywhere on the trek. Or perhaps, because I thought I was going to die on the cliff. And when I say cliff and rockface, I'm not joking. I ACTUALLY ROCK CLIMBED. PROPERLY. WITHOUT ANY GEAR. AND DIDN'T DIE. I REPEAT. DIDN'T DIE!!! Fuck, I am awesome, I'm totally patting my back now. The bad thing about the day was that it was fucking raining and we had to climb up the rocks with waterfalls falling all over us. So I got totally drenched, as did the others, and it was slippery and dangerous like hell. It was kinda jungle-like actually. During the time it was sorta fun, and not-so-fun at other times, but as I always say, in retrospect, it was really awesome. And I apologise to the others for all my screeching, screaming and prissiness on the cliff. But c'mon! I'm terrified of heights and here we were, climbing up rockfaces in the rain with NO gear whatsoever. I fail to see how anyone had time (or convenience of location) to take pics, but some of them did, so now you can all laugh at me scrambling up a rockface like Gollum. And yes, I crawled much of the time.


Look! It's Jac! My lifesaver!

   
Goldilocks Chris.


Someone's sexy bottom.

Lastly, the fireworks in Hong Kong are amazing. HK really knows how to celebrate Chinese New Year. Whoa mama. Perth could learn a lot from them. The parade sucked balls though. And Buddha on Lantau Island, I WILL see you one day!!

So that is the end of my epic one month adventure peoples! Shanghai, from where I started, seems a million miles away now, and Hong Kong, where I ended, is even fading now, and it's only been 5 days since I left. *sigh*

It's February. OMG. Wth. Firstly, thank you to all the people who wished me well on my birthday (and shame on you if you forgot!! Just joking :p). January has been such a whirlwind that I know I'll have trouble trying to compact everything into this entry. Oh well, here goes...

I've finished my course at BLCU. I think I must have missed about 120 hours of school all up thanks to travelling and laziness, but I have to say I am pretty happy about the end result. I think I have learnt a lot more about China, the language, the culture and myself, travelling, than sitting in a classroom 6 hours a day, 5 days a week for 4.5 months. In the end, I got 89 for reading and writing, 82 for speaking and 80 for listening. And the diploma looks pretty specky. Next course starts March 1. Woot! Saying 'goodbye' to my teachers was sad though...especially Huang Laoshi, my oral teacher, who I absolutely love to pieces. She was always more a friend than an authority figure...if only we could have teachers like her all the time...



Shanghai
Got here on January 24, left on January 27. Shanghai is SO overrated. OMG. I don't know why, but I don't have a love for this place. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful and nice and wonderful and cool and sophisticated...but also so damn boring! Shanghai is supposed to be Beijing AND Hong Kong in one place, so I should find it awesome, right? WRONG. I got pickpocketed in this damn city, and also, the place just felt so DEAD for somewhere that's supposed to be the most happening city in China. WTF. And bloody hard to navigate anywhere in Shanghai on foot...annoying! And also hard to find the actually places you wanna go...including shopping malls...this time, Lonely Planet was NOT my friend...or either, the LP Shanghai seriously needs to get updated. But it's survivable and a lot more pleasant for foreigners than many other Chinese cities.

   

Shanghai got a lot better when Lynn, Man and Rei arrived the next day, but we spent out entire time in Shanghai just lazing about and relaxing, drinking expensive tea and eating expensive food. Which was fine by me. After all, it's only a city and not somewhere I have to trek miles for to see places. Oh, and the Oriental Pearl Tower is SO ugly. Really is. Good at night but hideous in the day. And the Bund looks spectacular...but looks fake too! The insides of the buildings are magnificent though...more so than the outsides, I reckon. Shanghai is just weird (especially their dialect!) So Shanghai is, "mama huhu" imo. Lynn actually cannot believe I prefer Beijing over Shanghai. Even the 24 hour dim sum place has better Xiaolong baos than Shanghai, and that's their specialty! WTF?!


 

At least Yuyuan Old City was good...sorta. Maybe I'm just becoming a Beijing-ren. But I'd go to Shanghai again if I had the chance, I'm not convinced that I could have been so disappointed with the place...I musta just not been "in with the know-how". If only they'd open up half the goddamn shopping malls...AAAAND...I GOT TO SEE JESS!!! YAY!!! Only wish it could've been longer than for that half a night, but whatever! Miss you heaps hun!! *muah!*

This was the highlight of Shanghai. My very own store!!!



Huangshan
Otherwise known as the very famous Yellow Mountain. Beautiful, but "mafan" to get to. And didn't have enough time to see everything. Got to visit all the famous locations of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon there, but my camera died so Manny has almost all the good pics. :(

 
The second pic is the location where Zhang Ziyi dived into the water to retrieve her sword after Chow Yun Fat threw it in the river.

 
The padlocks bear the names of couples and the date they visit the Yellow Mountain. They are supposed to symbolise their love eternally locked together. The right picture shows all the different ways to write love ("ai") in Mandarin script.

 
Me, Lynn and Man contributing to the piled rocks garden...Rei deep in thought.

Yingtan
Shitty arse little city used as our connecting point to Guilin...which didn't exactly happen. We arrived at this place hoping to get train tickets to Guilin (which had been sold out at the Huangshan point), only to get told there were no seats or sleepers left, only standing ones...which meant we could have been standing for 16 hours or so. Didn't like this idea, so we decided to split...me to Guilin on the standing ticket to meet up with my friend (in hopes of upgrading to a sleeper if any were available), and Lynn, Man and Rei back up to Nanjing. The goodbye was so sudden that I burst into tears like a big baby. Here I was, standing in the middle of this train station, saying a hasty goodbye to my family of 5 months and feeling robbed of my extra time with them coz of goddamn crappy packed Chinese trains thanks to Chinese New Year. So I spent the next 9 hours in that weird city by myself bawling my eyes out on a huge banquet table in a hotel restaurant until I boarded my Guilin train...which happened to be half and hour late. Luckily, I had actually found out my friend was on exactly the same train from Shanghai...except he was in a sleeper, and we had planned already with the train guard via phone to have me upgrade to his carriage. But it all went awfully wrong.

Instead, I ended up in THIS:


It was disgusting, to say the least. I was horrified when I arrived at the carriage at 1am to find the carriage so packed that ppl were spilling out on the train stairs and crammed in the doorways standing. And I somehow got pushed all the way into the middle of the carriage, so I had bags on my head, feet in my face, and people spitting in my hair, as well as angry and impatient Chinese ppl SCREAMING in my ears. My nose was stuffed with their bad BO and the temperature was SEARING inside due to all the body heat. It was just awful. I almost just broke down and cried more right there because it had been such a bad day and all I wanted to do was see a familiar face and feel safe again, and it just looked more like I'd have to endure 16 hours of this crap. But instead, I just decided to charge through with my huge backpack, step over (and sometimes ON) ppl and shout (actually, sweet talk ;)) my way through to the train guard, and pleaded with him to let me upgrade. To my surprise, the moment the train guards and the locals found out I was a foreigner (no doubt, due to my bad Chinese accent), they were extremely accomodating. I have not encountered such lovely Chinese people so far such as on that horrible train ride. Locals were trying to speak to me to calm me down and the train guard was ringing back and forth to the other train guard where my friend was to locate him and get me off the carriage and onto his. When I finally got off the carriage, and saw my friend, it was the biggest relief ever. I felt REALLY happy, not only because it was nice to see a familiar face again after having to say goodbye to our other mates already, but also because I had that warm feeling of being accepted and taken care of by "my" people. Gotta love Guilin-ren.


Guilin/Longsheng/Yangshuo
These cities/towns/villages are in the Guangxi province, and they come a very close second to Haerbin as my most favourite place so far in China. In Longsheng, we went to the famous Dragon Rice Terraces, which are basically hills of 800m rice plantations...it's amazing! Hired a local female guide to lead us around the mazes and winds of the hills, and we climbed/walked, in total, about 8-10kms in 4 hours. Ouch, is all I can say. But amazing too.

   
   

Our guide could probably sell her hair as hair extensions and make a fortune.

Yangshuo is WOWZA. WOW. Once we arrived in Yangshuo, we did a 1.5 boat ride along the Li River, where we met some lovely Canadian guys and just enjoyed the amazing karst uprisings in the area. It is like being in The Lord Of The Rings movies, I swear. You're just on this river passing between these huge mountain like structures, with great weather and a nice relaxed feeling.

   

We then hopped off in a little town called Xingping to eat a Western breakfast (at 4pm! Haha! Talk about a craving!) at a lovely Western Cafe...and I have to say, the people in Yangshuo, so far, have been the most accomodating people during my experience in China. Once again, gotta love those Guilin-ren. The second day we took a bamboo raft down the Yunlong River, which was SO enjoyable...just to laze on bamboo sheets and go down mini falls and having this Chinese man paddle for us. AHHH! In the arvo, we rented a bike and cycled all the way to Yueliang Shan (Moon Hill), where we climbed all the steps to the top and had AWESOME views of Yangshuo.

   


February 2
Was my birthday. We arrived back in Guilin and decided to take it easy after all the rush and physical exertion of the last few days. It was a pleasant, but boring day. Guilin is not a beautiful place. It's really just a starting point to get to all the other locations in the LP. We decided to go to Qingxing Park and go see the Seven Star Cave...gotta say that Oz pounds China when it comes to caves...at least these caves. So disappointing. Didn't do much for my birthday, to be honest. Just got a lot of SMSes which brought big smiles to my face. :D



Ok, signing off now. Think you've all had enough of me. I'm in Yunnan province which is the south-west of China, and there will be a mammoth entry for this too!

Over & out!

G'DAY MATES & HAPPY NEW YEAR!
OMG, can you BELIEVE it's 2007? CRAZY. Where did 2006 go?!

So guess how I spent my New Year's? On a TRAIN. Yep! Haha, I left Beijing on the 29th of December to travel north-west to a city called Datong, which incidentally is apparently the 3rd most polluted city in China...and I have to say...Beijing is no longer dirty in my view, after going there. Datong is FILTHY. It's like the heart of China coal mining, and even though it was NEGATIVE 17 the first day I arrived, the place was clouded in black shit! On the street, the snow as BLACK, and the air was BLACK, and the dust was BLACK. GROSSSSS. My lungs are fully black now, I'm sure, coz even when I blew my nose, everything came out BLACK. Aurgh! But here are some nice pics of the snow covering the dirtiness of the place:



Well, Datong is famous for the Yungang Caves and Hanging Monastery. The Yungang Caves are basically these carvings of HUUUUGE Buddhas and other little things depicting life stories/Chinese history in the rock face...you have to see to believe how big some of these are. Shit man! And the Hanging Monastery is exactly that...a monastery hanging from the face of a cliff. Bloody scary climbing it, and we were the ONLY people there....great going in off-season! Beats bloody crowds, I can just imagine the place would fall down if everyone were on it at the same time! The trip to the Hanging Monastery took about 2 hours by bus/car, and I have to say, the bus trip was something to remember. The so-called "bus" was this mini-van, where we squashed about 15 people in for something that was only supposed to seat 10 people or so, so people were sitting on the floor of the vehicle and smoking inside with babies and just generally terribly uncomfortable. But hey, this is China, the land of no rules. Or perhaps, the only rule is that there are NO rules. The scenery to the place was amazing...well, beautiful, but haunting. It was exactly like how you see it in the movies...those deserted snowed out places with skeletal trees stripped of their leaves, and the fog, and the small circular bright image of the sun poking out between.

   

The Yungang Caves




The Hanging Monastery
I also realised I was standing in the middle of a frozen lake looking at a dam wall andfrozen water gushing out of the rocks. Kinda scary, but bloody cool!


We left Datong for Taiyuan by train to catch a bus to Pingyao (south of Datong) to visit the Old City of Pingyao. By Old City, I mean the type of architecture/building/living arrangements that you see in typical martial arts kung fu fighting Asian films...like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with the walls, the grey small squatty buildings, the Chinese roofs, lots of houses all near each other with lots of blocks. It's actually amazing to be surrounded in such rich history and culture, and hard to imagine how people lived like this/still live like this today. The wall of the Old City isolates it from the rest of the new city, and you can see the old weapons they used to keep the enemies out...like a roll of spikes they could release down a wall to kill people climbing up, or a plank of needles that they would crush an enemy with, etc etc. And walking on top of the wall across the whole of the Old City is cool. Pingyao was insanely dirty though. I felt really sick and also bad that I had to slow down and wasn't able to see too much of the Old City because I felt crook and was complaining a lot.

My internet is really fucked up right now, so unfortunately I cannot upload the pics of this place. Such a pity. When it is moving faster, I will get them up ASAP and edit this page. But until then...sorry! >.<

Harbin
HARBIN. WOW. What can I say? Seriously, this place is NOT China. I felt like I was in Russia. The city is small but BEAUTIFUL. The architecture is so European and it was fucking FREEZING up there (NEGATIVE 22 this time!) Mira, Alex, Ben, Lynn, Man and Rei all skipped class to go to Harbin (it's VERY north of Beijing, near Russia) primarily for the Snow & Ice Festival, but lots of the planning went horribly wrong for Mira, Alex and I. Ben, Lynn, Man and Rei were on the early soft sleeper trains, while Mira, Alex and I got stuck on rather late hard sleeper trains. Team 1 (Ben and co) stayed at the Shangri-la, whilst Team 2 (Mira, Alex and me) stayed in a more central cheaper hotel and with some random French guy. First thing I did in Harbin was go see the so-called "Ice Festival". Well it ended up that everyone went to the REAL Ice Festival except Alex and I, as we were shoupian-ed (cheated) by a taxi driver and taken to the smaller Ice Festival in a nearby park and not to the real deal. Was not impressed. I carced it TWICE whilst walking near the ice sculptures, boy, was I in pain.

   
 

After that, it was off to the Germ Warfare Museum with Mira and Alex to see how the Japanese tortured innocent Chinese citizens using various sicko methods during WWII. And by sick, I mean sick. Like being roasted alive in a furnace, being left to freeze to death outside in the harsh cold Harbin weather to test frostbite, to having your viscera cut out of you whilst you were still alive. Sick, eh? But still, kinda cool. In all honesty, the factory was pretty dull. Instead of the emotional sensations I had been expecting, I was left standing in the rooms of where thousands of Chinese had been brutally tortured and murdered feeling a sense of indifference. I think the fact that the museum’s descriptions of every specimen and the events that occurred was sooo biased towards the Chinese and spiteful of the Japanese rather than taking a more neutral matter-of-fact approach dampened the impact the place was supposed to have on me. And also the fact that I expected pictures (as stated in the Lonely Planet) of the actual bodies (yes, I am a sick baby, but c’mon!) or videos of things rather than a billion biographical pictures of the evil Japanese General of the organization. But indeed, the place (at least from the outside), is creepy. Looks exactly like one of those old haunted buildings you find in creepy horror films:

   

Then I left for the Yabuli Ski Resort, where I spent the next day falling on my arse as a NOOB skier. Ouch mama! But all in all, good fun. Fucking cold though. Worse than Harbin. Negative 30! And with huge gusts of wind. I swear my face ended up not only sunburnt, but also WIND-lashed. Shudders. And now all have a good laugh at the fact that I look like a big blue marshmallow here:

   

In Yabuli, I also made my first real local Chinese friends! Wow! We met them randomly by boldly asking them if they’d take us back to Yabuli Village to our accommodation because we didn’t want to get ripped off by other people again, and to our surprise, both of the guys could speak decent enough English. So through cunning use of decent English and Chinese from both sides, we managed to do a “Chicken and Duck” conversation on the way back to Yabuli Village, and they were also kind enough to help us out with our transport back to Harbin. We only had 20 minutes to get back and grab our stuff and buy train tickets back to Harbin, but we made it thanks to them. So we stood on a 3 hour train back to Harbin and treated them to dinner, where we FINALLY got to see Ben, Lynn, Man and Rei who we had NOT SEEN FOR THE ENTIRE TRIP. Yes, it was a bit of a disaster with the different accommodation and transport. But I was glad we at least got to see them, even if it was only for an hour before they left to go back to Beijing, because we had all been looking forward to this together for so long, and it all went horribly wrong. Sigh Poor Mira got shoupian-ed by some tour company for the skiing too, which means we missed her that day as well. We finally made it to the REAL Ice & Snow Sculpture in Harbin, which was AMAZING. Seriously WICKED STUFF! Not only were there sculptures that were the size of real life buildings, but baby white foxes and igloos and a fucking humongous Buddha bearing over us. The festival also had skiing, tobogganing, ice skating, snow patrolling, ice slides, etc etc etc. So awesome, as well as lots of coffee shops inside (but such a rip off).

   
   

Finally, I somehow missed our train back to Beijing. Why? Coz the fucking taxi driver took me on a merry go round and wasted my precious time, as well as getting lost in the train station. Fuck. Was not happy Jan. Only option was to take the next morning train back to Beijing. So since I had another day to kill in Harbin, I decided to finally go see the Siberian Tigers, which I had been dying to see. The tigers were awesome. Truly. I love tigers. The way they move, their stripes, the way they pounce, their eyes, their paws…everything! They are just so powerful, and as a pussy lover, of course I’m going to go jell-o for them! It was actually quite scary being trapped in a little bus while having 20 tigers roam around your bus and have their face right up next to yours with only a plastic window protecting you from certain death from a tiger’s paw. Yikes!! But it was rocking to get so up close and personal to them! I saw a tiger eat a live bird (the poor thing tried to fly away but the tiger pounced on it so fast that it was like…o_O Everyone in the bus was screaming and then ewwwing when the chook was ripped apart), and then we saw a leopard, lions, a bunch of ligers, a bunch of jaguars, a pair of white tigers and a BEAAAUTIFUL white lion who looked just like the one in Narnia. They all looked pretty miserable though. Poor things. No pics for these either, I’m sorry, as both our cams died.

So that is the end of my recent travels. Whew, bloody long. And in other news…my final exams are next week. Shit. I haven’t gone to school in God-knows-how-long, and also, I don’t care. It’s too hard now and there’s no motivation. I’m really ready for next semester.

Oh yeah, that’s right…NEXT SEMESTER! I’m staying!! I’m moving out of the dorm and getting my apartment this week…probably gonna live with two guys who are currently my classmates now and who I know will rock the place with me. I’m really looking forward to it, and also looking forward to doing REGULAR classes next semester (4 hours verses 6 hours in intensive right now). My Chinese still sucks and probably forever will, but I can only hope that it’ll come together SOMEHOW eventually within the next 6 months to a year.

So I don’t know when I’ll be back in Perth yet. But I miss you all!

Take care!

Luv ya, check ya, c-ya later!
The One and Only,
Conchita

你们好！

Long time, no update. Well, this will be another picture filled, whopping long entry. So take a deep breath and relaxxxxxxx....

I've been travelling a bit in the last few weeks. From Nov 20-26, I went on a school trip down to Suzhou, Hangzhou and SHANGHAI baby!! But in all honesty, the trip was absolutely awful. I got very sick halfway through, resulting in me being confined to the bus and my hotel room for the WHOLE of Shanghai and half of Hangzhou, so I only really got to see the parks and temples in Suzhou. In Suzhou, we visited two parks about ghosts and lions, and they had these rock formations in the shape of animals and zig-zag bridges that were believed, in ancient Chinese times, to keep the ghosts away because they could not navigate criss-cross. We also visited a Silk Factory in Suzhou (famous for silk production down there), where we saw those slimey little silkworms wriggling around and got a full on explanation of how silk is produced, etc etc. The place reeked a little. In Hangzhou, we went on this boat ride to view a temple, but the weather was so awful that it was foggy and no good pics were taken. And that was the beginning of the end. With all the pouring rain and cloudiness, Alex fell extremely sick after being caught in the rain...then passed it onto me...then I passed it onto Ben...who passed it onto Misa..then Pie...then everyone was sick eventually. The back end of the bus where my class was sitting was like a hospital...real infection zone. And yeah, I'll repeat: I DID NOT GET TO SEE ANY OF SHANGHAI. Disgusting. I am highly disappointed. Will be returning there for sure in February. I think the most enjoyable thing about the whole trip was, rather sadly, the train ride. Took 13 hours to get from Beijing to Suzhou, 3 hours from Suzhou to Hangzhou (by bus), then another 3 hours from Hangzhou to Shanghai. It was a trip that was rather forgettable.



Fooling around on the train.


Suzhou & Hangzhou Parks.



The Silk Factory in Suzhou.




NOW, onto the REAL stuff...

Last week I went down to the Sichuan Province (yes, the home of the hot and spicy Chinese food), to Chengdu and Jiuzhaigou Nature Reserve with Alex. We went backpacking and it was so much fun...for all the wrong reasons! We took a 27 (YES, TWENTY SEVEN) hour train ride from Beijing down to Chengdu, leaving Wednesday at 4pm and arriving Thursday at 7pm. We met the funniest Chinese people on the train and had a good laugh trying to communicate with them via Mandarin, the Beijing dialect and the Sichuan dialect, as well as English and French. Here are the awesome people and an idea of how crowded the train station is:




When we got out of the train station and docked our stuff at our hostel, we went out for dinner...and highly amused the kitchen staff at this certain eatery:


Yes, they were laughing at the fact that we could not read the menu (and it had no pictures either!) So we whipped out our Lonely Planet guide to Sichuan food for help. :)


Jiuzhaigou
One word: AMAZING. Absolutely amazing. Firstly, it was FUCKING FREEZING up there! I swear I got frostbite. I didn't feel my toes for the entire 5 days, as well as my fingers! And I wore 9 layers one day up in Jiuzhaigou. Jiuzhagou was absolutely BEAUTIFUL, but the place was totally deserted! I think Alex and I were the only people in town, and I'm not joking! Everything was closed, and it felt like a ghost town! It took 10 hours to get there by bus and we saw some amazing scenery along the way. I SAW SO MUCH SNOW!!! The water was full of crystal blue and green colours, the mountains were sprinkled with snow and the air was soooo fresh! But on the last night that we were in town, there was NO WATER whatsoever, so not only was it fucking freezing (even with the heater on at 30 degrees celcius!) but also kinda filthy! And our bus also broke down for FOUR hours on the way back to Chengdu. I was SO not happy, because Alex and I were stuck in the middle of nowhere on a mountain cliff in the middle of thick falling snow. Aurgh! Oh well, that is travelling on a budget. So much fun! </b>






And on the last day back in Chengdu, we had this AMAZING Sichuan meal...5 dishes for 50 Yuan! (That's less than $10 AUD!!) And we also shifted off to Haagen Dazs.




We went to see the Pandas in the morning, and Alex was totally smitten because he'd never seen them before.


The pandas kinda resemble our classmate Jerry:





One disturbing thing I saw on the way to the Panda place was a dead person on the road. Or at least I think he was. He was hit by a bus and was covered in a large pool of blood and not moving at all. And all the Chinese people could do was stand and stare around. I don't know the fate of the guy, but it is a timely reminder of our human mortality. RIP to him. xx

HELLO PUMPKINS!! I am BACK!
And this entry is dedicated to SEMEN BEAN.


The Summer Palace
This is one huge arse place. Went about a month ago with Alex, Jerry, Ben and Sam, and it was beautiful, but freaking freezing. The place has lots of beautiful temples and displays, as well as a long bridge across it's humongous lake. We walked for what seemed like forever, and took the ferry across the river. The downside? Damn foggy (ie. No decent pictures) and lots of people. Oh, and soybean drink here is disgusting.





L-R: Alex, Sam, Jerry, Ben.



Wanfujing
Wanfujing is located in Central Beijing and is pretty well known to everyone for being the good ol' shopping district. Slightly expensive shopping district though, I have to say. Wanfujing is also famous for something else...their night market. And this is what we do at the night markets:






FYI: Chicken's heart is disgusting. Centipede is bitter. Baby coconuts are sour as hell. Crickets and cockroaches are crunchy. Snake is so-so. And the fried ice cream tasted like a glob of oil. But this little piggy known as One Way Lynn thinks it's delicious:




Sanlitun
Lynn's British mates invaded Beijing, so we took them out to the expat districts of Hou Hai and Sanlitun for some partying. I am officially no longer a "non-drinker". Yep. And my alcohol threshold has risen. Whoop! And I've converted from cocktails to shooters. Mmm, gimme my "Blowjobs".






The Nationalities Park
Class trip! Woo! The Nationalities Park is basically a scenic information centre giving an insight into the different ethnic groups within China, including the minorities. The park is so big that it is divided into North and South, and in general, it was beautiful. We mainly got a glimpse of the Tibetan lifestyle, as the various native people of their respective groups put on a display of dance and song for us. Then we went to go eat at some local restaurant next to the park.





O, Me & Pie.

And then, Class A5 - from Left to Right:
Back Row: Louis, Jerry, O.
Middle Row: Ms. Guo, Rei, Lynn, Mira, Brian, Alex.
Front Row: Misa, Susi, Pie, Me.


Fragrant Hills
No, they don't smell. But a bus sure does. We had to endure a horrible 2 hour PACKED local bus ride to the Fragrant Hills, and I swear I almost fainted. One of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. Crazy mofo bus driver. And when we got there, we found that the Fragrant Hills was basically a mini Great Wall. All I could think to myself whilst dragging my feet up those thousands of steps was "Deja vu". Unfortunately the leaves had only JUST begun to change colour, so they were only yellow at the time, instead of red. So much for enduring gusty FREEZING winds at the top (and a horribly HORRIBLY horror filled ladies' toilet).





Now I have two exams tomorrow. And I hope you're happy with this post, ESPECIALLY Semen Bean.

Wish me luck? :)


After all, everyone needs cheat notes. :)

Thank you Ben for the pics!!






The gang outside our building and studying in the bush.



Mira (the one with the dreadlocks!) and her boy Tom, being calligraphy ambassadors.







There's something really wrong with our class.



A sunny CLEAR day in Beijing! So fucking rare!



ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY!!
Back L-R: Lynn (smoking), Jerry (grey shirt), my dear Sexy Alexi (black shirt).
Front L-R: Suze (going crazy), Me, Misa.
Missing: Ben (taking picture).

So I'm back in Beijing and totally depressed. I LOVE Hong Kong. I could not have asked for a better trip or holiday destination! Heck, I wouldn't mind living there now!

I went to Hong Kong via Shenzen and crossed the China-HK border via train. It took FOREVER to get across customs and immigration, but now my passport is full of lovely stamps! :D



I stayed at this hostel with two men, despite booking one for females, and on the first night, they dragged me out to the red light district of Wan Chai, where Diego (the American-born Peruvian), tried to train me on how to drink beer. Well, I got through about half a pint before I felt like I was gonna collapse on the bar counter. Beer is so gross.




On the second day, I went out exploring on foot in Central Hong Kong, and boy, is the island beautiful! I love how there are all these tall skyscrapers and overpasses in this packed condensed area, and then you see green mountains and valleys and the ocean between the buildings. Hong Kong is also so clean compared to Beijing and the people are absolutely lovely. Any Westerner can survive over there because English is everywhere, despite the fact that many of the Honkies have thick Canto accents. And I think Hong Kong boys are hot, both local and expats. The ones with the British accents make me melt!

I also managed to make it over to Macau via ferry, whereby I took a rickshaw around the whole place. My rickshaw man was so lovely, and took photos of me everywhere, so I do actually have some photos of me at a place I went to! Macau still has a definite Portuguese influence, as every single sign and poster was written in three languages - Portuguese, Traditional Mandarin script and English. The buildings are also half European and half Asian, and the scenery was pretty awesome.







I also went up to the infamous Peak on Hong Kong Island via the Peak Tram, which was pretty scary because it was such a steep ride up. The floor of the tram is actually built slanted inside to help ppl stand when it starts ascending and descending, so go figure. Hong Kong is BEAUTIFUL from the Peak, but my cam unfortunately died out on me when I was right at the top at night because of my snap happiness in Macau. Shame. :(

Unfortunately, I had quite the memorable last night...or should I say, morning, in Hong Kong, where, the one and only Chita, got DRUNK. Yes, DRUNK. Oh my goodness. It was an awful feeling. I had TWO drinks, but the barman made my Screwdriver so damn concentrated that I was puking in the loo about 5 minutes after I had finished my drink, and I was flopping around in bed at about 5am. *a la sigh*

What did I buy? LOTS of Apple stuff...Macbook, wireless mouse, iPod nano, 9 pairs of shoes, lots of clothing. I am so broke. But I can't complain coz it was so worth it.

I miss Hong Kong already.

Holy.Fucking.Shit.

I feel like S.H.I.T. today.

I have been "poisoned" by the Beijing alcohol. My stomach has been in absolute agony for the past 24 hours and I know it was not due to the food since I've only been eating nice vegies and fruits since clubbing last night. Sam says I got plied with "dirty alcohol", and despite only have two drinks altogether from Lush and Propaganda, Prop's drinks are apparently notoriously bad.

Oh god, I feel sick.

So I spent the day lunching and Starbucking and studying with Stu, and FINALLY, here is a pic of the infamous Green Tea Frappuccino I get all the time at Starbucks:

 

Ok, who wants to hear about my Hutong adventure? No one. But you're gonna read it anyway! Muaha!

So yesterday, Ben, Alex and I set out for the Lonely Planet Lakeside Walk Adventure. It was supposed to take, according to the book, 2-3 hours for the WHOLE thing, but we only managed to do half of it...in 3 hours or more. Whoops. For those who don't know what Hutongs are, they are the old residential blocks that are being gradually knocked down for new high rise apartments, or something along the lines of that. Anyway, traditional Chinese living. Alex and Ben are much better photographers than me (specky digital effects in their cam and all), so here are their pics of the day:

Link to Ben's Hutong Pics

 

Alex's Pics
 
 

And here are some of us and the lakeside river:
 

So the Hutongs that I saw were the more modern ones, they looked more like buildings that had been built to purposely LOOK old, but weren't really old. Apparently the real old ones that Ben and Alex saw before I joined them were the real deal. In general, lots of the alleyways were very smelly and dirty looking, but the lakeside restaurants and views were beautiful. There is a real nightlife around there as there are SOOO many bars open and so many lights on at night, it really looks quite nice and it was rather enjoyable getting lost. As you can see, we took a rickshaw around for a while, which was kinda fun, but made us look uber touristy. Anyway, I cbb writing much about the experience, so I figured you'd just enjoy a pic post.

Ciao huns!

HOWDY!

Class A5
Ok, so I've started school already...and O.M.G. Ouch! It's so hard! o_O I had an oral placement test where I met a cool older American guy (his Mandarin is amazing though!) called Dan, and this part Asian boy with awesome eyes who I see everywhere but haven't really talked to much, who spoke zilch Mandarin, and seemed about as on par as me with Mandarin ability. Anyway, turns out I'm not on A0 completely clueless level, but rather, the level above, A NORMAL, so I should technically feel good about myself, but really...Chichi is awful at Mandarin. *gulps* I have three awfully nice teachers that I adore too...and who seem to adore my Chinese name..."Xin-Yi hen ker ai!!" >.<

The Great Wall at Mutianyu
So I have class from 8-12 and 2-4 Monday-Friday, and on some of the Friday arvos, we go out for a class excursion around Beijing. For our first trip yesterday, we went to The Great Wall at Mutianyu. The bus trip there was rather amusing as we got caught in a traffic obstruction...a support cable and its pole had fallen down and screwed up the traffic. Of course, our lovely Bunny Bus was too tall for it, so three people, including Dan, had to get out and hold the cable up...the funniest thing was that a Japanese tourist handed out this fluffy pink bathroom/toilet cleaner tool to the helpers to "push up" the cable, and sure enough, everyone went laughing ballistic and snap happy.

 
Dan's the guy looking back - do you see the pink fluffy thing?!

So I've already been to the Badaling section of the Great Wall, but by golly, this Mutianyu one was BAD. Firstly, the weather was about 27 degrees celcius or something, so I'm a nice two shades darker thanks to the bloody long walk; secondly, because I'm a chicken shit, I decided to walk up all those stupid steps to the top rather than take the cable car, which was a big mistake. I couldn't help narrowing my eyes when I finally met up with the other 90% of my lazy fuck classmates who decided to cable car it up and then walk down...of course, I'm just a stupid fuck.

 
L-R: Me, Mira (German), Miss Huang (Oral teacher).

So Misa (the Japanese girl in my class who took the walk with me - chicken shit #2), and I struggled all the way to the top, and it was mega crowded with a Chinese tourist group and just SO FAR. There's also a slide down option at Mutianyu, where you get on some type of boogie board thing and just wing it all the way down a hill from the top, but I decided not to do that as well because...well, because I was scared. >.<

 

Me & Misa at The Mutianyu Great Wall (and yes, we DID walk all that long fucking way!!!)

So Chi got a lot of exercise, but now Chi is poo coloured and terribly tired.

Bla Bla Bar
So last night was the first time I went out to the campus' bar, Bla Bla Bar (how appropriate). I met a really cool British guy called Sam, who's 19 and is like, the third person I know who is under 20. The only person I know who is 18 is that Dutch boy I met on the first day whose name I don't even know, and Misa is 19. He asked me how old I thought he was (he's blonde, blue eyed and wears glasses, has a beard), and so I said 19. And I was right. Ok ok, I ACTUALLY thought he mighta been 23, and I only knew his real age coz Stu had told me about Sam before at dinner that night, but oh well. He's also Cheryl's classmate, so what a small world. ;)

Friends
My class consists of many BCs - (insert country) born Chinese. Almost everyone is an Asian born in Europe who can speak many European languages but is buggered at Mandarin. Just to name a couple, I mainly hang out with Ben (England/Hong Kong), Lynn (England), Misa (Japan), Rune (Norway), Jeremy (Switzerland), Susie (Germany), Mira (Germany) and Alex (France). I also hang out with a great Swiss girl called Suy who's not in my class, but whom I met on the first day. And I still see Stu and the other Canadian people now and then, although it's been hard because of the intense classes. Rune was actually studying in Perth just last year at MURDOCH UNI and he has a WA Driver's Licence, so of course I'm gonna like him! Haha! We make a funny sight too because he's about 6'3" and I'm only 5'2" and well...here's a pic. He looks a bit like a skinny tall version of Tommy the Rugrat.

Boys Boys Boys
AHAHAHAHA! I knew all the girls would wanna know about this! All I can say is, I think most chicks would be jealous of my situation right now, but Chichi is such a loser and has no confidence that she misses all her opportunities. And Chichi is a real nerd too, so I'm too busy studying and trying to BREATHE during my breaks. There are loads of older foreign guys (but I'm the token Aussie..seriously, there are NO Aussies!), but all the cute ones seem to be meatheads or here for the chicks (baaaad ones too) instead of for learning Mandarin first and foremost, sooo...ok, seriously, if you wanna know more, maybe you should just email me or MSN me.

Who wants a chop?
So if you want a stamp of your Chinese name, send me the correct Pin Yin of your name or a drawing of the whole thing, and I'll get it done for you.

And I leave you here with a lovely picture of our water situation in Beijing:

 

 Just to let you know, I woke up to Cheryl screeching in the bathroom.

(P.S. I'm going to Hong Kong, btw. ;) )

Poll #822367
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

Where should CC go for her National Week (Oct 1-7) holiday?

HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAYS!!!

(Sorry I'm late Jess! :( )

Lots and lots and lots of love!! (and your presents when I get back ;) )

xx Chi

Goddamn, I'm bored. I never thought I would say this, but I want school to start already!! Gah! I went to enrol on Monday and it took FOREVER...there are about 20 Aussie students but I bet you I'm the only beginner out of them all! I met a nice 18yo Dutch boy who looks likely to be in the same level as me, he kinda reminds me of a blonde Jos (yeah Annabel, that one was for you ;)). Anyway, found out that I had a problem with my visa, so today I had to go get myself to a hospital for a medical check...I can't tell you how worried I was about them sticking needles into me. I mean, seriously, I don't trust the Chinese health care system. I'm getting tested for AIDS and Syphillis and other STDs, but who knows if THEY'LL give me one of them instead!

Things that are starting to annoy me:
1) Annoying busybody shop assistants. I try to fend them off by talking in English, but noooo, they follow me around the shop even MORE. Or either, if I walk into a snotty shop dressed in casual gear, they look down their nose at me, when in fact, the things are so relatively cheap that I could buy out their entire store if I wanted to. So HA! for Chinese snobs.
2) Little kids with the slit pants. As in, they have pants, but the whole crotch area is sliced open for "easy access". Gross.
3) RUDE CHINESE PEOPLE PUSHING IN IN LINES!!!
4) STUPID Chinese people (that's about 99% of them) standing in front of train doors trying to push themselves in before letting the ones ON the train out first! Err, where is the logic in THAT?!
5) Eating out this whole week for nearly every meal. Setting up here has been expensive, and having to trek to the supermarket every 2 days has been annoying because our fridge is so damn tiny! This is a Korean BBQ I had with my Canadian friends earlier in the week:

6) The Beijing accent! At first I thought it was cool coz it's the proper Chinese accent, but after hearing so many strong ones and a lot of spitting, I'm SO put off it! GAH! "NaaaarrrrrrrRRRRRrrrrrrr! *hoik! - spit!*"
7) Nothing to watch on TV. Like, there are bout 60 channels here, but they're all repeated twice or three times!! So reallyl, there's like only 20 at the most. And the only English programmes here are CNN and CCTV 9, but CNN replays the same 30 min segment of news ALL DAY LONG (omg, yesterday it was the same 9/11 story every hour with different newsreaders), and with CCTV 9, the Chinese communications sector filter out all the bad crap about China, so only screen "goody" bits about the country...very unrealistic, you could say. And repetitive too. I'm SO SICK of seeing Japanese anime or US cartoons dubbed in Mandarin too!! It's enough that they are subtitled in Mandarin, but then they have to go and overlay all the dialogue in their own tongue!
8) Bad coffee. Like, BAD. Ugh. Not even Starbucks is good here. The coffee just tastes either burnt, double roasted or plain awful! So I've switched to the Green Tea Frappucino here. o_O
9) Cold Macca's. Yeurgh!! So I don't eat McD's anymore. And can you believe that they have TARO PINEAPPLE PIE?!

10) Having to walk everywhere for ages and the hot weather. I'm ready for winter and snow! The subway system here is kinda backwards (it only has FOUR lines just like Perth!!) and people don't really know how to lay themselves out NEATLY on the train like in Japan. I don't see how Beijing can only have 4 train lines when Tokyo has like 50!!

As for the Canadians, I hang out with 4 of them. My roommate Cheryl, Debi (half Chinese-half Portuguese I think), Courtney and Stu. I like them but I can't wait to hang around some people of my own age and from lots of other different countries. Here is a pic of them (minus Stu, but I'm stealing it from his blog):

L-R: Debi, Courtney, Me, Cheryl.

Ok, first things first...OMG, STEVE IRWIN DIED?!!! @#(#^($^#$^@&#&*@^!!! I got informed by a lovely Belgium backpacker on the street on Tuesday night. He said he gave me his condolences for Australia losing one of its "natural treasures". I thought he was going to tell me it was some sporting cup or whatnot. Lol! Oh man, that's actually really sad. A sting ray stab right to the heart?! :( Well, hey, you can look on the bright side of things....maybe now we won't have people thinking we all talk like Crocodile Dundee or keep pet koalas and crocs. Or maybe people will just forget about Australia altogether. :(

Anyway...I am a "real man" now, in Mao Zedong's own words! Boy was I ever so glad to see that plaque bearing that famous saying after walking THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA! Well, half of it at least. I only had an hour, ok!! WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW! It is THE most amazing thing I've ever seen. Julius (big bro) and I crashed my Mum & Dad's med tour to race around with all the doctors around the wall. There is something completely exhilirating knowing you are walking among and on top of mountains. I can't begin to fathom HOW the Chinese built that wall by hand, but wow, it is a trek and a half! It wasn't like I expected either. I thought the path would be quite large and wide (shoulda paid more attention to the Amazing Race!) and smooth, but instead, it was BLOODY STEEP, HUMONGOUSLY STEPPY and the railings were about 2ft high, so if you wanted to hold on to prevent yourself from tumbling backwards, you had to practically "squat walk". Very uncomfortable. But such good exercise!! I will definitely go back again to do the other side later.

Also went to the Ming Tombs that day, but it was rather disappointing as you only got to see artifacts of the tombs, not the actual dead bodies of the former Emperors. Apparently, the Chinese Government won't extract them because they fear disrespect and that the tombs may release deadly poison or gas or something like that. What a pity! Anyway, the valley in which the Ming Emperors are buried is HUMONGOUS, and trees grow out of the walls of the building like this.

I've also been to see the mighty Mao Zedong's preserved dead body in that precious mousseleum (spelling?) of his. WELL, there is a huge white statue of him when you first walk in and then you get like 30 seconds worth of seeing his plastinated head in a glass case popping out of the blanket that covers the rest of his body. And there are a gazillion people who go to see his body and donate money and flowers every day. What a jipp. Wait so long to only see him for that long. No pics either soz, as nothing was allowed to be brought in.

I've now moved to my new dorm at uni, and I have a Canadian/Chinese roommate called Cheryl. She is lovely and the dorm is brand new, but the uni is SO DISORGANISED. It's driving me insane! And so many of the admin possess the rude Chinese "I don't care" attitude that it gets really frustrating. 

And Beijing overall...well, what can I say. It is one HELL of a city:
                 1) It is HUMONGOUS. 
                 2) It is heinously polluted! I swear I've cut my life short about 5 years in the past week just from the smog and terrible air quality here. 
                 3) The traffic is a nightmare. People do NOT follow the rules here...not that there are any, but anyway...people just drive wherever and whenever they want, pedestrians walk whenever then want and cyclists are asking to be run over. Seriously! There's no need for traffic lanes because well frankly, there ARE none. Everyone drives and walks in a huge pack in the middle of the street. And the Chinese drive on the "wrong" side of the road. ie. The right hand side of the road, which means the driver's seat is on the left hand side of the car too. How cute is this.
                 4) SPITTING. UGH!! I have gotten used to the noise of a throaty preparation for a big spit behind me now. The people here could give Leo in Titanic a run for his money! 
                 5) MANY MANY expats. MANY. The Americans are wonderful to me here, the Chinese taxi drivers are cool (even though many try to rip you off on a fare), but the Chinese people in general are not that cool, especially department store clerks. Haven't been to the markets yet, so I can't say. But yikes, things aren't THAT cheap here either.

Anyway, that's a long enough entry. Hope you enjoyed it! Ciao ciao!

Dear Friends, I will post in here about my 'adventures' (snoooorrreee!) when I get the chance to hop on a computer in China. Remember, when you leave a comment, it will come up as 'anonymous', so please add your name in the message before you post it, or I won't know who you are! (And dw, I'll screen the comments first and scan over before deciding to make them public or not...just in case it's NSFW ;) ) Bya my Munchkins!! ^.^