Summary of China

Things in China:
- Most Chinese can’t speak English, but love to try to help us.
- When there is one Chinese person helping us, then others crowd around.
- Chinese find it amazing how we can travel without speaking the language and how we carry our heavy backpacks around.
- We have a  translation book, made by ourselves and the help of Chinese; which gets bigger each day.
- When we show them the Chinese sentences, they write back in Chinese.
- They also keep talking to us in Chinese.
- We didn’t meet many Westerners.
- They hope we are from America, because they like America so much.
- They like noise; cars which reverse play a song, if they lock bikes they play a tune, hooting for everything/no reason and so loud, eating & spitting with as much noise as possible.
- That’s why they are probably deaf and shout through their phones.
- The road washers and bin trucks play a nice tune while driving around.
- There is construction going on everywhere, but you don’t see many workers.
- People are  curious and keep staring.
- Children point at us.
- Small children have a hole in their pants, so they can pooh and pee anytime, anywhere.
- People can only have one child. There are exceptions.
- There are no buggies and pushchairs, they carry their kids.
- Local busses are cheap. Only 1 Yuan.
- Long distance busses have an assistant to collect the money from us. They let everyone in during the journey.
- The long distance busses also deliver goods.  
- At every train station, some bus stations and some tourist attractions, bags have to be checked by a x-ray machine.  
- The train is a great way to travel, but is not always clean, and people are quiet loud at night.
- They like their tell sell on the trains.
- Chinese make lovely, cheap food.
- Eating with sticks makes us enjoy our food even longer.
- Our favourite food, which we always share (and that we can order in Chinese) is tomato/egg, eggplant/garlic and mushrooms/vegetables.
- We also like street food!
- Restaurants have any kind of chairs; very small chairs, wooden chairs, plastic chairs, chairs taped together or any kind of stools.
- They always give out plastic bags.
- It’s forbidden  to go on facebook or you tube.
- People are as ‘tall’ as I am.
- They love playing games: cards, Mah-jong and other Chinese games.
- These games are often played in the park.
- In the park old people sing (out of tune) and dance.
- There are many flags followed by tour groups.
- Men like to hold their t-shirts up, exposing their belly.
- Some are so proud of their eight  beard hairs, that they let these hairs grow and grow.
- They all have the same black, straight hair.
- Men have long finger nails. Not only their pinkies and thumbs.
- In the big cities, the old towns are being replaced by skyscrapers.
- Women are doing what we class as men’s jobs.
- Many people looking for plastic bottles in the bins.
- Most people throw everything on the ground: that’s probably why there are so many cleaners.
- They use the most slippery tiles in the world to pave the floors with. Even pavements, stations, hotels etc.
- Most taxi’s are VW.
- Some cars drive around without a number plate.
- Light? Most bikes don’t have their lights on. Bicycles not at all.
- Pedestrians never look where they walk; especially when we are running.
- Chinese also run backwards.
- Gyms  are everywhere on the street.
- Lots of girls wear high heels that are to big.
- Many of them wear shoes with thick soles.

Beijing 7^th till the 13th of September
We liked Beijing. The metro system is great. Also cycling around the hutongs/alleyways is a good way of exploring how they live.
Mac Donalds, Pizza Hut and Kfc are everywhere.
We have been to Tiananmen Square, Forbidden city, Great Wall, Qianhai Lake and the Art  district.

Pingyao 14^th till the 16^th of September
Even though Pingyao was touristy (full of Chinese), we enjoyed the walled city, cycling to Shuanglin Temple and the shopping. I bought a Chinese dress.
The kebab bread was delicious there!

Xi’an 17^th till the 18^th of September
Ate lots of Muslim street food and bread. There was a lot of security because of the argument with Japan about the 3 islands. We stayed in a nice hostel. The terracotta Warriors where expensive and not as impressive as we thought they would be.
We almost missed the train to Suzhou, because we were at the wrong train station à Xi’an Bei (North). We got to the modern train in time because of our excellent taxi driver.

Suzhou 19^th till the 22^nd of September
On the way to Suzhou Myles bought runners. At Suzhou train station we got the bus. To get to Suzhou centre, we jumped at the back of a bike. We had good dinner and beers along the little canal. We have been walking around town all day to find a bicycle rent, which was not there. Instead we met a Chinese guy who wanted to speak English with us.

Shanghai 22^nd till the 23^th of September
First day of rain. Took us a while to find a hostel. Went walking around old town market and along the skyline ‘the bund’, which was beautiful.

Hangzhou and Wuzhen 24^th till the 26^th of September
Had street food every day at the ‘street food lane’. Bought a hat. Went cycling around West lake with the red bikes. We also went to the water town Wuzhen on a very hot day.

Tunxi and Huangshan 27^th till the 28^th of September
We went to the mountain area Huangshan. It was misty, so we didn’t see a lot. We had some good dinners on the street.

Wuyuan, Likeng and Xiaoqi 29^th of September till the 1^st of October
Because of the Chinese holidays, we went to a not so famous place and booked the hotel (a very fancy one) in advance. We went to Likeng - an old water town – on a lovely sunny day.

Jishou 3^th till the 5^th of October
Got the bus to Jingdezhen, train to Yingtan and then a sleeper to Jishou. Got a hotel there, because Fenghuang and Déhang were booked out because of the holidays. We didn’t go to Fenghuang because the bus was packed and we didn’t pay to get in Déhang, because it was to rainy, misty and cold.

Sanjiang 6^th of October
The view from the train was amazing. Rice fields and old towns.

Longshen 7^th of October
The bus ride through the rice fields and along small towns with wooden houses was beautiful. Longshen is a small town with cheap hotel, food and shops. Buildings are lit up at night.

Guilin 8^th of October
For the first time in a long time, we met some westerners again. Myles had a beer with them, while I had a headache from running in the heat.

Yangshuo 9^th till the 10^th of October
Where are we going to go? Tibet, Nepal, Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, India?
Many tourists are here in Yangshuo. A lot of Chinese and some westerners. We went cycling along the river.
Great view of the river and mountains from the rooftop, where we had a beer with a Dutch and a Bolivian guy who we met in Mac Donald’s.

Xingping 11^th till the 14^th of October
Walked up one of the mountains in the heat. Staying in a cheap an good hostel with a good atmosphere, rooftop and movies every evening. Found a great place to eat with these very small chairs and a dirty extractor fan, but the people were so nice.
Rented a bicycle and cycled along the nice looking mountains along the river.

Yangshuo 15^th till the 16^th of October
Back in Yangshou, we stayed in a cheaper hotel, but visited our last hostel every day for booking the cooking course etc. Cooking course – where 3 old weird Dutch joined us - was good! Delicious food.
Bought a new rucksack, repaired my white skirt and hang some photo’s of us in hostel 11. And of course; went to the bakery.
The weather here is so good! In Ulaan Baatar it’s freezing at night time.

Kaili 17^th and the 19^th of October
A long bus journey brought us to Luizhou, where the hot night train brought us to Guiyang. There we had breakfast (bread) on the square, where lots of people were staring at us. Taking photo’s of them, stopped them staring. From Guiyang we had a hard seat to Kaili and a terrible toilet experience.
In Kaili we saw some traditional hair styles, lots of parts of animals on the meat market, kids with holes in their pants, people and kids staring at us.

Langdè 18^th of October
A 30 minute bus trip took us to Langdè. A quiet village, with a wind and rain bridge (which was free) houses on the hills, with people working along the river with their rice and a lot of sun. Not many  tourists at all. The other bridges at the rice fields were broken, so we had to walk through the river to get back to the bus.

Kunming 20^th till the 22^nd of October
Another night train (top bed) with a 3 hours delay, brought us to Kunming. We went to the green lake park, saw old people playing mah-jong, playing cards, dancing and singing. Not the best we ever heard. We enjoyed the rooftop of the hostel and met a couple of westerners. We had a great room and played table tennis.

Lijiang 23^th of October
A good journey on the night train took us to Lijiang where it was very cold when we got there early in the morning. This city was to touristy. So we only spend one day walking around.

Shangri-la 24^th till the 27^th of October
After a 4 hour bus journey we got to lovely, Tibetan style, Shangri-la. People are friendly, dancing and singing. Even the bin cleaners have music on their trucks. The altitude here is 3300 meters, so it was quiet cold in the shade. It froze in the evenings. We were very happy with our double duvet and the electrical blanket. Especially in the first hostel which was made of wood.
Every day we wore our hats, jumpers and I even wore my gloves and scarf.
It was hard to get out of bed, but when we were out in the sun for breakfast, it was fine.
Here we met Steve and Lianne who took us to a bar opening where we got pretty drunk. The other days we went with them and Jannike to an Indian restaurant, Italian restaurant and cycled around the lake and had a picknick.
Myles and I also went to the chicken temple.

Our last days in China 28^th and the 29^th of October
From Shangri-la we took the bus to Lijiang where we killed some time. Next was the night train to Kunming where we got our Vietnamese visa, Jo got a haircut, Myles got a usb stick, we got our bus tickets to Vietnam, we got a splitter for our earphones, we got peanut butter, we went to the post office, we changed as much money as possible at the bank and we tried to get rid of the rest of our money and played a game of table tennis. At 19.30 we jumped on the night bus to the border town Hei kou.