Shanghai

Skyline - randomly taken while going for dinner.


Here we go.

I spent a long time there.
But I had very good company indeed and was still a little ill.
The weather sucked and constant rain made sight-seeing not very enjoyable. I've been to the Shanghai Art Gallery and a little around the city though.

Wujian Snack Road - soon to disappear for another posh shopping street...




hot pot eating! yummy!


pig brain for the hot pot - nice!
As soon as Chris uploads the video from the guy juggling the noodles I'll post it.


not so posh - yet


walking home from the club at 4:30 in the morning


Shanghai streets at night





After 17hrs in the train I'm in Xi'an (8.2 million ppl) now, going to see the terracotta army tomorrow and then wait 'til the 27th to get my passport with extended visa back from the PSB (Public Security Bureau). Peter should be here by the 25th from Hong Kong.

Chongqing to Shanghai

Yep.

First of all I have to correct the last entry. Guiling doesn't have 600.000 ppl but 6 million of course.

Here we go. I'm atm sorting pictures and after I've resized them I'm gonna upload them all. It's really not easy since Peter and Mari had both reflex cameras and now in Shanghai Jerome and Chris are into photography as well... we took so many (useless) pictures.

Leaving Chonqing on the boat, here's the skyline (or at least a small part of it) and another boat.


Fist tourist attraction stop with our boat was the 'City of Ghosts': Fengdu.
At 6.30 in the morning the speakers all over the boat started playing horrific Chinese techno music and everybody was forced to wake up.
The town itself consisted mainly of temples and tourist shops and some strange attractions. Nothing special. But we almost missed our boat because we ate some noodles in town and they were already about to leave us behind but Peter forced them to stay and wait for Mari, Patrick (a Chinese guy we met on the boat) and me.

Chinese underworld


people grinder - Chinese underworld, a fun place to be. Please note the dog licking the blood.


a tower! wow!


cable car


amazing view from the highest point!


You spend a lot of time on the sun deck (for which you had to pay extra - even though there rarely was any sun) and watch the Chinese guys playing cards and mahjong and getting drunk.
Since Peter and Mari (studying some Asian-studies in Bonn) both speak really good Chinese we somehow started playing with the bored kids, which was a lot of fun. The weather sucked, it was cold, windy and foggy.

view from the boat...


Cpt. Future reporting in


thumb-wrestling Chinese kids


it was pretty windy at one point...



more random pics






Next stop was the 'Zhang Fei' Temple, he's the warrior guy from the 'Romance of the three Kingdoms' who swore the peach garden oath together with Liu Bei and that other guy.


The 3rd attraction were 'the lesser three gorges' where we changed in smaller boats and drove through the rocks.


The 4th and last thing was the great dam(n).
Even in daylight it would have probably been to foggy to see anything.

front view


on top


model, that thing in the middle (with the small canal is actually a boat elevator)


We spent the night in Yichang (3.99 million ppl), very happy to get a real bathroom (even though it was dirty and cold water only - still far better than the thing on the boat).

Yichang instant noodles hotel room convention


Next day we got train tickets to Wuhan and said goodbye to Patrick.

Obviously we were not the only ones wanting to take a train - Yichang station


After a couple of hours we were in Wuhan (4.32 million ppl), the city in the heart of China or something like that. There are a couple of temples, a huge bridge over the Yangtze and a very adorable snack alley.
After a couple of days there we split: Peter flew to Hong Kong to get his throat checked and Mari took the fast train to Beijing to take a flight back to Germany for a couple of weeks and I took the night train to Shanghai.

the amazing snack alley


Peter and Mari enjoying the snack alley



shooting balloons with air guns!


blind palm reader asleep near Guiyuan temple


girl in the temple (some might know it)


being cool somewhere in the temple compounds


Wuhan center


me, Peter and Jonathan (NL) in Wuhan


Peter in the hostel


me taking medicine


Here I am in the Mingtown Hiker's Youth Hostel, coughing an sneezing and taking all kinds of medicine. Hanging around with Chris aka Archibald Quentin from London (redhatphotography.blogspot.com), Jerome from Sydney/Philippines, Aviv from Israel and Hassan from Marocco. I met Anqi, a friend of Peter who's studying micro electronics in Shanghai and loads of other people. I even bought myself a new mobile phone, a K-Touch B920 - these Chinese electronics are so awfully cheap... I'll stay here another couple of days and get better before I go do Xi'an. But I think the medicine I bought today (about the 8th I try...) seems to be kicking in!

a girl we met in the big camera/secondhand/photography equipment store where I got a professional cleaning and Jerome and Chris get their pictures developed.


we were obviously playing around - Aviv


Chris and his extremely cool oldschool Chinese camera


nice hot pot dinner I enjoyed with Anqi and a friend of her's


What you stumble upon in a Shanghai second hand bookstore

Guilin, Yabgshuo, Chongqing

It's been a while.
So prepare for a long blog.

I took the 6hrs train from Nanning to Guilin. There in the Pink Flower Youth Hostel (I actually got a discount with my Thai fake student ID) I met Katja from Leipzin in my Dorm who is studying one year in Nanjing.

Guilin is surrounded by scenic limestone formations, here are some pics.

tower in the middle of a lake in the middle of Guilin (600.000ppl).


Temple in the 'Seven-Star-Park'


View over Guilin from one of the hills in the park


giant panda in the park's zoo


lesser panda


next on the program: Reed-Flute Cave





I then took the 6hr boat ride from Guilin to Yangshuo on Li river.

the rocks from the 20 yuan bill!


more from the boat


Katja joined me in Yangshuo the next day by bus and we did some sight seeing. We got bicycles and rode to the moon hill and climbed all the way to the top. On our way back to town we had a nice hot pot in a small restaurent along the road, delicious!


View over Yanghuo (144.000ppl) from my hotel's roof (serious 9th floor climbing action!)


other side


Yanghsuo tourist business at night. This city is one of the main attractions for Chinese tourists in China.


Moon Hill. It's some 1215 steps to the hole and some more rock climbing up to the top.


Katja and me on the peak


view from up there


about to land...


yummy hot pot


In China they eat dogs!


and poultry...


...and goat (that's the head of a pig on the left btw)...


...and about everything else that moves. From owls to frogs you can get everything (and every part of it). Yangshuo market.



Next day we parted ways after taking the bus back to Guilin. She went to the train station and I got a 1hr flight to Chongqing, a small town (city: 5 million, municipality: 31 million people) on the banks of the Yangtze, called 'the fog capital'. And it's true, you can barely see the other side of the river and the huge maze of skyscrapers and huts is a little bit frightening.



You have to imagine 40 storey apartment skyscrapers looming out of the fog above it. And they are everywhere!




Tomorrow I'll be going on a boat again but this time it's on the Yangtze and it's for 2 nights and three days! Next time I post you'll get pictures from the Three Gorges Dam! See you in Wuhan!