From our own backyard!

In April I went to New Zealand with students from our year 9. This is a little advert we made to get the year 8 to behave and start sawing money for when it will be their turn and they get the possibility to join the yearly year 9 trip to New Zealand.

Harbin Diary # 3 - My ear still hurts and a travel agency is a good idea!

Mr. Ding Yu meet us after breakfast at the reception. He was a quite tall man with a honest and concerned face.
"I've spoke with a friend of mine in Mudanjiang. We can get you train tickets to there and you can meet him there and he will try to go with you to the station to get you on a train to Yanji".
His English was perfect and charming with the typical Chinese accent where they can't really pronounce the R's.
During the night my ear had kept me awake some time and I had time to give the whole situation a thought, and I knew I needed to see a doctor.
"Thank you for your efforts Mr. Ding Yu, we really appreciate it, ,but I think we will go to a Travel agency to see if they can get us all the way to Yanji and book a Hotel as well".
"That is a very good idea." He looked very relieved as I suggested this way to handle our further adventures.
"But I need to see a Doctor because of pain in my ear."
"There is a very famous Hospital here and I'm sure you can find someone who speaks English there."
He wrote a note in Chinese saying the Name and address of the Hospital, and that I wanted to see a doctor because of pain in the ear.
"Show this to a taxi driver."
The first driver we met outside the Hotel, looked at the note and shook his head. He didn't want to take us there, why; I don't know and didn't have the energy to figure out why. Instead we headed out on the streets and lured a Taxi from there.
The building was huge and inside it was busy and looked quite like a Hospital. The signs was in Chinese and English so we tried to figure out where to go.
"Wauw, what a huge place, I'll just go to the information stand and ask the nurse sitting there.
"Nihao". Was the only Chinese word I could think of, but it didn't help a lot when you want to explain that you've got an ear filled with runny smelly stuff and that it hurt, so I just gave her the note from Mr. Ding Yu.
She looked at it and replied a whole lot of words, but when she realized that she as well could have been talking to one of the rare Manchurian tigers -which in fact lives there around- she just stopped, turned around and continued the word flow, but now to one of the Hospital guards. I guess she asked her to take this foreigner to the ear doctors, to stay with me and to get me through all the paper work, and - of course- pay what it must cost for an out patient.
The young woman took the note and let me understand that I just had to follow her.
We came to the 4th floor to a registration desk for patients who want to see the doctor. There was quite a line waiting, but she just pushed herself through to the nurse explaining the whole thing.
After about 3 minutes I was equipped with a Chinese medical health smart card, a medical journal and a receipt for the 45 Yuan I'd paid. The guard then dragged me along again and we came to a hall with about 30 people waiting. She just knocked on a door and entered. The two doctors in there and her had a short dialog and then I got dragged in and found my self in a dentist like chair with a big lamp shining into my left ear. The doctor -a young woman- sat down next to me and looked into my ear.
"There is something in there!" She communicated shortly with my private guard woman and soon a found my self again at her tail rushing through the halls again. This time to another desk and another nurse and yet another amount of Yuan and a receipt, and then she took me to another chair in yet another room and soon after another doctor -with face mask and safety glasses, sat next to me with kind of a pipe stock into my ear, soaking out all the nasty stuff from inside.
Minutes later nothing more came out and it went back to the doctor in the first room. Again straight in the chair- means jumping the line of the many people waiting outside, by whom the curiosity seemed bigger than the frustration to see this "foreigner" get treatment immediately-
and this time she put a cotton bud into my ear to try to get some samples of the stuff.
She put it in a plastic bag, handed it to the guard and then we were again on our way somewhere in that huge building.
Another desk, another receipt and then waiting. This was a lab, and they took a test to figure out what it was in my ear that caused the pain and the infection.
Soon the guard came out again and then back to the chair by the doctor. The people outside was looking very curious at me, and I felt bad and ashamed to jump the line like that.
Sitting in the chair waiting for the doctor to figure out my disease and the treatment, I could see all the different faces looking through the window, to see this "white guy" getting treatment.
"This is your disease." The doctor showed me the Latin name on the computer screen. I have absolutely no idea what that was, but I got some creme to put into my ear once a day, and I had to come back the next day, so they could soak out the discharge that would develop overnight.
So now we knew what to do part of the next day in Harbin; visit the Hospital, again. To cope with that and to prepare the next task -the visit to a travel agency to organize the next step- we went to the beer garden, to sit down, relax and charge up the batteries again.

Good morning Mr. spider, do you surf the web?

He was sitting in a bush outside our hotel in Harbin. Every morning when we went to and from breakfast we stopped to pay him a visit. He was HUGE. Catriona can't stand spiders, so she was always looking from a safe distance. The first thing we saw was actually his web, and just by the size of it, it was obvious that the beast living there was enormous as well. The first day we didn't see him, he didn't come out from his hide in the tree from where the web was spun. The second day though I got too curios. I just had to see who he was. I took a little straw, and gently knocked on the thick upper wire of the web, dock dock dock.
I nearly jumped out of my flip flops as this big fat spider came sprinting out from his hide, ready to suck the life out of that poor thing, he thought was being cought. "Tough luck baby, but smile, you"re on camera.

The art of persuasion!

How to get people to do the most incredible things. I guess that is something everyone asks him or herself every day.
Then look at this guy and you'll know how to do that, but be sure to have an original and funny idea.

And I think this is somewhere in Copenhagen (København). I think I recognize the pavement to be somewhere on Strøget and it is called Gråbrødre Torv and the design of the tiles is made by a famous -in Denmark- artist called Bjørn Nørgaard. He is now a Professor at the Art Academy in Copenhagen and he got very famours back in the sixties where he and his girlfriend slaughtered an old horse on a little island between Denmark and Sweden, and after that they cut it into small pieces and put the parts in sealed glases and excibited these.
A lot of people were devastated at that time, and a serious discussion started and everybody condemmed this "murder" of an old horse in the name of art.
At the same time there was a war going on in Vietnam. Everyday lots of dead and lots of suffering. But that didn't interest many, but this poor old horse was in the news for a long time.

Bad commercials #1.

The statement; "worst commercial ever" could be a reason for a lot of discussion, but I'm sure not many will or can defend the following commercial, it is just to tacky and I cannot imagine it to be meant serious, but maybe that is the whole idea????

Harbin Diary #2 - Mr. Ding Yu!

My ear felt like it was filled with sour cream and it was starting to hurt. I didn't know what to do as none of us spoke any putonghua and didn't know how to find a doctor or a hospital in a city with 3,6 million inhabitants.Catriona had being sitting on her bed in our room for an hour or more to try to write a sentence, we could show the ladies at the reception, asking if they could arrange train tickets for us to our next destination.
The whole day we'd been walking around the city to find the train station. We found it all right, but then the serious trouble started; how to figure out which train left for Yanji, as everything was -of course- in Chinese. Even that we asked somebody they wasn't really able to help us or sent us to the next floor of the huge station, where more people was lined up in ques in front of the ticktet stalls. The train is still the most comon transportation in China, so there was thousands of people trying to get tickets to where ever they had to go. After some hours without any luck we gave up, and decided to ask in the Hotel for help, for that we needed Catrionas translation.
We came down to the reception and gave them the piece of paper with our issue written in Pinyin, which is a system developed to write chinese with western letters.
The ladies at the desk was very friendly and tried always her best, but with the two of us she was just overwhelmed. She took a short look at the note, grapped the phone and phoned someone. As she got through, she said something very quickly and then handed me the phone.
"Halloo, I am Mr. Ding Yu; what can I do for you?"
A friendly voice with excellent english. At first I was first like lamed -I just didn't expect to hear anybody speaking english- before I finally could answer and told the friendly voice what we were trying to ask for.
"Ok, I'll be at the Hotel tomorrow at 10, you can find me in the reception."
Great, again saved just before the finish line and that we'd used the whole day to find the station and then given up getting any tickets, didn't matter anymore; now it seemed that we could get some things done; tomorrow. Well it wasn't just a lost day, on our trip through the city to the station, we'd had some not so nice coffee in a copy coffee shop called US Bucks -I wonder where they got that name from- and we'd again been in the beer gardens, had a walk at the riverfront and and and.... some nice food.

End of part 2.

Culinaria China!

I suddenly realize that I haven’t mentioned anything about the food. Normally this is one of the biggest issues on a holiday, if you like the food or not. If you just can’t get any of the strange dishes through your throat, it is a bad experience and can ruin any holiday.
Well, neither me nor Catriona can be put into the box of fuzzy eaters, I eat nearly everything and I’m also very open and curious about food, and have been living in Hong Kong now for more than two years, has added some stuff to my “have been eaten” list, things that I didn’t know that I’d like.
If you are very curious about trying everything possible, Mainland China is then one of the right places to go, as here is nearly everything on the menu, if not everything.
In China there is food everywhere. In the restaurants and in all the eating-places as in small stalls along the street, where you just pick up something as you go, food. These small places are where you really can find the odd stuff like grilled scorpions, cocoons, bugs and snakes and whatever that move.
We were looking at all this, but didn’t try it; there must be a limit for curiosity.
But anyway, our general opinion on the food we ate there, must be somewhere in the upper part of the scale for good food.
I’ve traveled some countries so far, all with some amazing food, but I think never with food as good and varied like the food we got in China.
Like I said, there is food and eating-places everywhere, and at lunch- and dinner-time, these are always stuffed with people of all ages and parts of society, gathering together to enjoy 7 or 8 different dishes. The Chinese people love food, and they love it fresh and freshly made. Sometimes the eating-places didn’t have a menu, instead they took you to a kind of storage room looking like the food department of a small grocery, and then they asked you to pick out what you wanted to eat. Well they had no pigs, cows or chickens running around there, but the fish was still swimming around in fish tanks, and all kinds of vegetables fresh in boxes.
We for sure ate a lot, but mainly because the western kind of going to a restaurant, where everybody orders just the plate or dish they want, isn’t common in China; they order 5 to 8 different thing and then they share, pick a bit here and there. We kind of knew this, but got surprised by the sizes of the dishes we ordered. They were huge and mostly we couldn’t even finish it all up. Anyway, mostly we didn’t pay more than around 80 Yuan, including the two beers, for a meal. If I didn't mention this before, then 10 Yuan is around 1 Euro.

A little diversion!

If you think about adopting a dog to give it a better life, you might have a look at these two guys -even that I think they will be gone by now after this excellent performance on TV.

Harbin Diary #1 - Mr. Summer Spring Autumn.

“This is your disease”, the young doctor said and pointed at her computer screen, and between loads of Chinese signs I recognized some words in brackets. Now I can’t remember what it said, but I didn’t understand it anyway and they –the doctor and her assistant – didn’t give me time to write it down, before they went to another site to try to find out which treatment I needed.
How sick is that, we’re one week into our trip, and I’m already at a hospital with some kind of an ear infection.
Fade out.48 hours earlier, we’d arrived from Beijing to Harbin in the northeast of China. Yes that’s the story about the doggy taxi driver who wanted to rip us of as you can read in a previous post, so enough about that.
After checking into our hotel we went for a walk in the streets. It was around 10 PM and in the streets close to our Hotel people were barbequing kebabs on the pavements and having dinner. Further along, arriving on a European like pedestrian zone we were dragged into a kind of beer garden, flanked by numerous food stalls.

With two pints of fresh draught Harbin beer in our hands, we found an empty table and sat down. “Cheers, let’s see how this City is going to be”!
My ear had already started to bother me at that time; in fact it had been doing so since the early morning when we were still in Beijing.
We were the only western people in the beer garden, and the stirring had begun.
“Can I sit here for a moment?”
We looked up at saw the friendly face of a Chinese man.
“Of course, please sit down!”
“Sorry, but my English is bad, Welcome to China, my name is Mr. Summer Spring Autumn”.
Then we learned the Chinese word for cheers; “Gambei” and had a nice chat with this friendly and open person, who came from the Shandong province, but had been in Harbin because of work in a period of 10 days or so.
More beer got to the table as we were sharing life stories and views. So far it was a good opening to take on a new city and it’s people.
By the way; the pint of beer was 3 Yuan, just if somebody wants to know, 10 Yuan is around 1 Euro, so ask again if you think I could become a China fan?
To be continued.

Beijing Diary#5 -Dancing in the park!

The Temple of Heaven park is located in a straight line south of the forbidden city and Tian'anmen square, and has also got the same kind of attraction to Chinese tourists and is -I guess- a must see place for Beijing visitors. It was quite nice and very old fashioned Chinese with the big complex of nice ancient temples. It was very hot day, and with the experience of the forbidden city in mind, we were not really up to the struggle to get to se much among the thousands of other visitors. Maybe July isn't the best month to visit Beijing or China at all, as it is the big holiday month in China as well.
We managed to see the most of the sights before we were looking for the exit and back into the buzzing life of Beijing outside this huge park. just coming close to the east gate we started to hear music, and very loud music. As we got nearer it turned out to be a kind of a mobile dukebox, playing Chinese evergreen dance music, and then between the trees and on the oben square next to the path way, dozens of people was dancing and enjoying the music. It was like a Sunday tea dance ceremony, just happening in the public park under the trees. People of all ages were tip toeing around, some looking as they took it very seriously as it weas an important dance contest.
It is very typical and in most Chinese cities this is a common event on Sundays in the park, I was told later. I like that and it is the same with people exercicing in public places, but I'll talk abbout this later anyway, so this time you have to do with this little story.

Traffic in Harbin.

The diary will continue, here I just found a video showing the kind of traffic you have to deal with on a trip to China. Her it is from Harbin, where we went after finishing of the Beijing adventure.

Beijing diary#4 - What a great Stadium!

On the 8th of the 8th 2008 at 8.08 PM the Beijing Olympics started with a fascinating show.
That is exactly one year ago on this date. We were at some friends house to watch this great event. And what happened; we couldn't even see it as it was broadcasted on a TV channel neither they or we could receive. We tried all possible options available on their tellie, but no, nothing from the grand opening in Beijing came through, and at the end we had to watch it on a labtop from the internet from some remote TV station somewhere in Chile or Columbia.
In Beijing this summer we had the opportunity to go there ourselves to see these venues with our own eyes, but without Mr. Phelps and Mr.Bolt and whatever they all were called, who dominated the headlines one year back in time.
The time we got there there were only a lot of tourists running around the Olympic area.
We got in to see th Birds nest Stadium -The National Stadium- and what an experience. It is a great Stadium, and I'm sure every big Football or Rugby club in the whole world will envy and like to call their home ground. No one is at home there at the moment, only the thousands of tourists peeping around inside to try to gasp a bit of the atmosphere from back then, one year ago.
Of cause we couldn't, we could just enjoy the feeling of being there and to walk around on the running track and get our photo taken with dozens of Chinese families.

Beijing diary#3 - What a great wall!

"All in all it's just another brick in the wall". Like Pink Floyd taught us once in the beginning of the 80ties. Walking along on the Great Wall of China this sentence becomes quite a new meaning. Some parts of this world famous wall is well restored, others are seeming to fall apart. No wonder, as they are quite old and also in some remote locations.
Beijing is a good spot to start if you want to have a look at this wall. Just some hours drive outside the city, you'll have access to a view and a walk. There is public busses going out to some of the venues or you can hire a car and driver, who then will take you to the part you want and pick t=you up some where else, after your hike. Just walk around the entrance of the Forbidden city or on Tian'anmen Square, and people will approach you and offer you the trip. And it isn't expensive, for about 400 to 600 Yuan (40 to 60 Euros) you can have a driver and a car for the whole day, and get exately where you like. We joined a tour arranged by the Backpackers Hostel. It was great as it took us to a more remote part 3 hours ride outside, and we had to hike about 8 kilometers on the wall, and best of all, also on a part not to crowded with tour groups in high heels, as it was a quite rough climb on a big unrestored part of the great wall.










The feeling of hiking there was worth the trip itself. As you can see the wall on the hill and down the valleys, you get a humble feeling. This thing is build for hundreds and hundreds years ago, but still -kind of- standing. It is maybe also one of the buildings in the world, what every child know about in an early age as it is surrounded with kind of a myth or legend.
I was just stunned as I approached it and saw how it was up there on the hills and just continued infront and behind on the horizon.
That we had bit of a struggle to shake the souvinier sales men and women, who traced us, of, was at the end worth the trouble, and this hike on The Great Wall will still be one of the upmost good experiences of this first real visit to the great neighboor to the north.

Beijing diary#2 - Tian'anmen Square & Forbidden City!

This place is huge! Tian'anmen square is the center of Beijing -and China. It is the biggest public square in the world -it is told- and for sure it is a big place. On that square you'll find the monument of the peoples heroes and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, and the square is flanked of the great hall of the people to the west and the museum of the Chinese revolution and museum of Chinese history to the east. It was pleasant to walk around on that big square and there was lot's of people approaching us for a little chat, a photo and to try to do some business.
"Hi, where do you come from?"
"From Scotland and Denmark!"
"Oh, you must have a romantic story."
That was nearly always the exact sentences when somebody wanted to offer them selves as guides or organize a tour for us to the Great Wall or just around Beijing. They were not annoying though, and I'm sure they would do a good job and I won't say that you shouldn't do this, if you want, because they are mainly just nice people who knows their city and want to earn some money by guiding visitors around.
Just north on the other side of the big Boulevard -Dongchang'an lie- The entrance to the forbidden city is located and entering the Gate of heavenly peace -with its big portrait of Chairman Mao- you will find your self -among thousands others- on the brink of the forbidden city.
After entering these gates, the feeling of the big crowd just outside and at the ticket stalls just disappeared. There was enough room for everybody and it was even possible to find some corners without that many people, to sit down and relax and to try to get some kind of orientation. The sun was bathing down on everybody from a clear sky, and most of the visitors was using an umbrella against the sun, so it wasn't that much time we were able to stand out side to comprehend the huge squares inside the city it self as it was just to hot. Just to try to give kind of an impression to the size of this "city" then I can say that the second yard or square you come to after entering and going straight towards north and through the Gate of supreme Harmony -which you can see on the photo just behind this fellow-, this second yard is said to be able to hold 100.000 people, and it is just a minor part of the whole complex.

China diary#1. Beijing - something about Hutong's and traffic.

I've been sorting some photos and been looking through our diary from back some weeks ago, but so much has happened and I'm not really sure where to start the story.
Still I'm a bit blast away by the size of China, and the very different cities and landscapes we've seen and the distances we've traveled, and yet only seen so little of this huge diverted country.
We started out in Beijing, so why not start there by adding something to the small descriptions already posted from some time back, when we were "on the road".
Like all of China in general, Beijing is really changing, developing and growing. Many of the old original Beijing neighborhoods -called Hutong's- is being demolished to give room for the progress -read Investment and money making.
Yet in the old center and around Tian'anmen square and the forbidden city, many of these Hutong's still exist and it is worth while strolling around here to have a look. Either just by walking or by bike, which in fact maybe is the best option, as it is faster and you don't need to continiously reject all the offers of a pedicab or jigsaw ride -which for sure can be fun- but when you get of one after a finished tour, you can be sure that the next "offer" will wait just around the corner.
In these Hutong's you can still see how life could have been years back in time, a thing you for sure cannot feel in other district's in Beijing, where modern skyscrapers and huge fancy shopping malls together with a forest of construction cranes, will be the most common sight.
The pictures I'd had in my mind of thousands of bicycles peddling along the roads. also puffed away like a soap bubble. The streets is still filled, but now by myriads of cars in every possible size and standard, leaving an astonishing noise, as the most common tool to make the way through the frenetic traffic, seems to be the use of the horn; "if you can hear me, get out of my way".
In some ways my romantic imagination of the thousands of Chinese on their bikes through Beijing, still could seem to have something true about it, now they are all just behind the stirring wheel of a car, but still drives and acts like on a bike. The traffic in China is a mystery to all visitors I guess. There seems to be no rules as everybody just seeks their own way ahead, which often also leads to driving in more lanes or even the wrong direction on the roads. But as everybody is aware of how it works, not much goes wrong, or at least; we didn't see any accident in the 3 weeks we traveled around there. Crossing the roads was always something exciting, because you can't expect that anyone will stop, no, they just calculate your speed with their own, and then pass you either in front or behind. A dangerous thing for pedestrians -and everybody else- is if they suddenly stops, because you can be sure the driver in the car would have calculated you to be somewhere else by the time he might hit.

Back home in Tai Wan village, Hong Kong.

That was it for this time, traveling in China I mean. We've returned home with a lot of good experiences and stories in our luggage and now it is just time to sort all the impressions and do some editorial work on the stories and the loads of pictures, and then they will be posted here in the coming weeks before we start working again.
We've had a major good time in China even that we had -or chose- to change our first travel route because of extreme heavy rain in Sichuan & Yunnan province, which caused mudslides and flooding. Instead we headed north east and visited the Russian influenced Harbin, the Chinese/Korean city of Yanji, just on the border to North Korea, Dalian called Hong Kong of the north and then Qingdao, the extreme nice, calm and relaxed friendly former German colony at the Yellow Sea, where they -not surprisingly- makes the best beer in China; Tsingdao Beer.