Trekking in Sapa, Vietnam

Thursday 17^th Oct.

Something we definitely learned in China, is that travel time and distances, is always much longer than we are told. So we got up early, to make sure that we would catch the bus, between Kunming and the Chinese/Vietnamese border. According to what the hostel staff told us, it would take us 1 hour with public transport to get to the bus terminal. So we counted on 2 hours. We had to change bus once, and it took ages before the next bus approached. We could see that a lot of people were waiting for the same bus, so we got nervous, if we all could fit in there. It came after 45 min. and we only just fitted in there. It was a very old wooden bus, no suspensions and very few seats. Its engine were more dead than alive, and it was uphill to the bus terminal, so we only drove 5-15 km/h. Exciting ride and we were glad, that we had enough time. It took 2h 15min.

We bought our tickets and ate breakfast 2 yoghurts, 1 banana and some crackers (digestive) each. The bus didn’t arrive at the gate, and we kept asking different people if we were at the right spot. When it was suppose to leave, we got guided by other passengers, and found our bus in the back of the bus terminal. Then we realized why the bus hadn’t entered the gate, there were 3 mechanics buried in the engine compartment, they were literally greased in oil from head to feet. The driver was yelling at them and going out of his mind. Finally, 30 min. delayed, the bus was rolling.  After just 2 hours we had a break, which was odd because we already were late, but in the break the driver was working, or pretending he was, on the engine.  While the other passengers were eating from the dirty street kitchen, just outside the most disgusting toilets, we were walking around the small houses, and watched the most awful sight, until now. A truck filled with small cages, stocked together with several hundreds of dogs in, some barked, some was fighting for their lifes, and some gave up already. It was like a knife got twisted in our hearts, like the worst nightmare you can imagine! 

1½ hour delayed (5.30pm), we arrived at the chinese border town Hekou, and had no clue where to go. The town looked very small, and the taxi drivers only wanted 20 Yuan (18kr), to take us to the border, so we decided to walk, the apparently short distance. A woman told us that it was around 1 km. This became the longest kilometer we ever walked, probably 5-6 km, and 2 hours later we finally got to the border office. Now the nerves began, we read that we shouldn’t expect any service after 6 pm, we got there at 7.30 pm. We didn’t have a return ticket out of Vietnam, which is necessary to get the 15 days visa, that Scandinavians get for free. We first got a stamp in our passport = no turning back to China.

We had to cross a bridge before we got to the Vietnamese border, which means that if we didn’t get in to Vietnam, we would most likely have to sleep on the bridge, or we didn’t know what would happen actually, we could definitely not get back into China. We agreed that I should lead the word, since Miss Thomsen were more nervous and grumpy.

Finally after 20 min., just watching the border controllers flipping our passports in every possible direction, we got the approval stamps, and could now legally enter Vietnam.

We got met by a lot of taxi drivers (yeah they speak English in Vietnam), that wanted to drive us to Sapa, actually our next destination, but because it now was so late, there was no more public busses running this day, and the taxi’s wanted 200.000 Dong each (52,25 kr.), it’s so easy to convert the vietnamese dong into danish kroner, you just have to devide the amount with 3850, then you have it in kr.) for the 38 km uphill drive, we knew that the bus prices should be between 40000-60000 Dong each, so we decided to find a hotel in the Vietnamese border town (Lao Cai) for the night, and then take the public bus the next morning.

Now this was easier said, than done… We had no map over the city, it was dark, we already had walked way more, than any other day with all our stuff, so our backs and feet was killing us, and we only had 2 yoghurts, 1 banana and 0,5 l. water each the whole day.

After 30 min. we finally found a little hotel (more likely a motel), it costed 200000 Dong for a db. room, this sounded pretty cheap, so we quickly decided for it, but before we just wanted to check the room, Lisbeth did so, and when she and the receptionist, walked down the stairs to the lobby again, Lisbeth was completely white in her face (more than usually) – she just looked at me and said: Come on Erik, we’re leaving…

So we did, me without asking any questions, I thought there probably was a good reason. When they had entered the room, a 15 cm. big lizard were crawling up the wall… Hmm… I thought she had prepared herself a bit more for animals, than she obviously had… So after 5 min. walking I told her, that she really had to man a bit up, because the animals would most likely only get bigger, and more common from now on. Unfortunately I was right.

At the next hotel, I had a 90 % de ja vu, only the price of the room, and the animal wasn’t the same, else the exact same story, as with the first hotel. This time a big frog was sitting in the middle of the room, when they entered it!

In the end, after 2 hours searching, we found a room for 250.000 Dong, with no visible animals in it.

After getting our backpacks of, and locked into the room, we went out for some quick dinner, at a local street kitchen (it was 45000 Dong for both of us) – had a long hot shower when we got back, and then passed out in our beds.

We left the hotel in the morning, struggled with our backs for a couple of km.’s and realized that the public bus, was only running one time in the afternoon. So we had to pay the price for a minibus, which we were trying to avoid the day before, but what are you gonna do! We had to go to Sapa.

We bargained with the driver, and got it for cheap, 100000 Dong for the 38 km drive. We waited for a while before we actually left, and that didn’t surprise us at all. The road was really narrow, muddy and unfinished, plus we were driving in the mountains with sharp corners, so all in all a quite exciting trip.

Everything is cheaper in Vietnam – awesome for our strict budget.

We stayed at Green Valley Hotel, 5 min. walk from town. It slowly began to rain, as we got higher up in the mountains. High humidity, cloudy and colder than anywhere else we’ve been. Like a grey and sadly rainy day in Denmark. Great to feel like home actually!

Sapa is full of foreigners and booming of tourism, it’s one of the best trekking areas in Asia, with loads of rice paddies, valleys, mountains and local villages with minority groups. It’s mostly misty and cloudy, but even though Sapa is still a fascinating destination.

We got approached by a local woman, from the H’mong minority, and she offered us to trek with her, and have a homestay, with her and her family the next day. That sounded very interesting, and much cheaper and realistic, than what the travel agency could offer us. We should pay 1 million dong for the trip.

The rest of the day we were writing on our blog and researching, that’s basically what we do, if we’re not on a trip, or out on adventure. Most of the time, we find a bar/restaurant with free wifi, and hang out there most of the day. We encourage each other to write the blog, and are really happy that we do it, cause it’s definitely something that we will look back at in the future - so that’s what we call a working day!!

Saturday 19^th Oct.

In the morning we packed our small bags, and left the big ones at the hotel (free luggage storage).

We got picked up at our hote, and left town, with our host and guide for the next 2 days (it was only us, and a french guy doing the homestay).

We just got out of town, and then the journey began. They (3 H’mong women) led us up on small, steep and narrow paths. As we got higher and higher, there was more mud, and it became really slippery from time to time. You really had to watch your steps and always look one or two steps ahead. The tiny H’mong women made it look like a walk in the park, but for us it was a really tough challenge and demanding. Unfurtunately it was misty, so the visibility was bad, and every now and then it rained. We enjoyed the trekking a lot, and the weather conditions didn’t bother us that much, we found it very exciting anyway.   

We met a lot of farmer animals on the way, and couldn’t stop thinking about, how well they treat animals here, compared to China.

As we were walking in the rainforest, the women were telling us about all the plants that they use for sewing, head-ache medicine and colouring clothes. We walked through small places, where wild cannabis was growing, and they use the straw for thread, in their sewing.

They impressed us with folding every little straw, into animals and hearts. (Broder Salsa ville være gul og grøn af misundelse).

We got to our hosts home around 3pm. (after 15 km. of trekking).  A wooden house with concrete floors, no isolation, tons of bags with rice, very dark, no toilet (only in the fields outside), open-fire in the “kitchen” (also the only heating source), no closets – only lines for hanging clothes, cold arrangement.

Just outside there was huge rice paddies, and the only water they have, is the rain water coming from the mountains.

Our host and her husband, (who wasn’t there), were self-sufficient, and had 4 children, no one in the family could read or write.

They served us a delicious lunch, with their own rice, vegetables etc. We hang out in front of the fire most of the afternoon, and got really sored in our butts, of those small stools.

They had dried corns hanging over the fire, and her friend used them to introduced us, to their kinds of popcorn, and after that we introduced them to European popcorn. See the video below.

Dinner was well served as well, and as a dessert she introduced us to the H’mong peoples, so called happy water, which was rice wine, with different tastes. One of them tasted like “kleine feigling”, so we agreed every time she offered us more.  

At bed time, the children arranged some blankets on the floor, and we realized later, that it wasn’t for us, it was for them. So we got one of the two beds in the house, the French guy got the other, and the family slept on the cold concrete floor.

At 4.30 in the morning we woke up, by the noise of the male chicken outside, the rain pouring down the roof, and the smell of open-fire inside.

Breakfast was leftovers from the day before, fried-rice mixed with eggs, we had a hard time eating rice in the morning, but knew that we should eat some, since we were going trekking again. 

The trek was much easier next day, we stayed on the concrete roads most of the time, and we walked through 3 minority villages. They are extremely small people, and they’re all wearing the same clothes, bracelets, huge earrings, scarfs rolled around their head, and their little wooden baskets. They all sew their own clothes, and the thread is from the natures straws.

We had much better visibility than the day before, and the scenery with all the rice terraces was stunning, and much more beautiful than we dare to imagine. It was a tough trek, since we mostly were walking uphill. The trek was 11 km and we got home to the hotel 1.30pm.

Now it was time for a rest, in our awesome bed with bed heating (a big blanket underneath the sheet, just like seat heating in cars) what a great invention. As told before it wasn’t warm there. The hotel did our laundry, all our clothes was either muddy or smelled like smoke.

Demanding trekking

Our host is in the middle

Fresh picked cannabis

Cooking food 

Living room

Master bedroom

Rice terraces

Waterbuffalos everywhere

A real collector zone

Sunday seewing meeting on the corner


Trekking Video


       

Monday 21^st Oct.

We slept in and had a solid breakfast at the hotel, checked out and went to one of the many restaurants in town, with wifi. Here we were chilling all day, until we had to catch the sleeper bus to Hanoi at 6pm.

We were satisfied with our time and trekking in Sapa, besides that the weather could have turned out better. Now we were really looking forward to the beaches and cold drinks.

The bus drivers that should take us to Hanoi, were really rude, aggressive and unpolite to us. They were 2 young boys, really immature and thought they owned the world, and the bus of cause. They didn’t seemed to like tourists at all, and definitely not us. At one point the one driver came and took Lisbeths sleeping blanket, and told us we could share one, eventhough there was enough for all in the bus, but it was basically just to annoy us. I told him to give it back, and he threatened us with throwing it in our face, and seemed  pissed off, for no reason. This was just in the beginning of the journey, so we realized quickly that it would be a living nightmare, to get to Hanoi. Most of all because of the drivers, but also because of the unfinished narrow mountain roads, and their terrible driving habbits.

We were put in the back of the bus, with a german guy and a chinese couple. All tourist in the bad spots, and all Vietnamese in the good spots, that’s not really how you attract more tourists. We only had small periods of sleeping, and were exhausted when we got dropped off at 4.30am in Hanoi, or actually 4 km outside of Hanoi.

The driver was giving us shit again, because he saw that we locked our backpacks together and to the bus - just to feel more safe. But he was freaking out again, so while I was trying to unlock our bags, Lisbeth was keeping him away from me, otherwise he was in my face all the time, and pulled in our bags.

It’s really normal to lock your bag here, because you can never trust anyone. 

Well, we had to take a cab from there to the bus station in the city.  We shared it with the german guy, since he was going in the same direction. We catched the next bus to Haiphong, and finally got some sleep, only for about two hours though.

We weren’t sure, if we would spend a night in Haiphong, or just leave to Cat Ba Island immediately. We walked around in Haiphong for a while, to check it out and find some breakfast. Haiphong didn’t seem interesting enough for us, so we decided to travel further on to the island.

Found the harbour shortly after breakfast and a motorbike ride.  Bought our tickets, and this was the first time we got scammed. We payed for a speed boat, that would take 1½ hour. After 1½ hour we stopped by a harbour, and we could tell on our map, and our compass, that it wasn’t our destination. Well with a little nervous feeling inside, we stayed on the boat without knowing where it was going.

We didn’t want to ask any of all the weird, smelly and curious bong smoking fishermen, they were already creepy enough, and we didn’t want to let them know, that we were nervous about the trip and them.

They got really close to us, and we were really alert, and holding on to our bags. One of the guys was asking me, if we should change watched, cause he saw that mine was with etc. compass,  that’s where it started to get really strange, because him and his friend was whispering about us (or the watch), pointing and laughing. We actually both got paranoid, but were trying to act cool, meanwhile we were arranging what to do, when we got off the boat, and how to react if they would come near us. At that point we were sure that they would definitely steal my watch. When we approached the harbor, and we finally realized that we got dropped off the right place (just an hour to late, and with paying 70000 dong too much each), we could relax a bit more. At the end it all turned out good.

We assume that they were just curious fishermen, that didn’t see tourist a lot. Weather on the island were smoking hot, which we had been looking forward to, the last couple of weeks.

The trip from Sapa to Cat Ba Island is around 600 km and took us 21 hours to travel, we were damn tired and thirsty. First bar we saw after 2 min. walk, we agreed that we needed a beer more than ever, and it tasted like heaven.

While enjoying our beer, we watched people (our favorite occupation), and saw a lot of round-eyed tourists, such a relief to see, now we really felt safe and could finally relax.

After 2 cold big Tigers (600ml beers), we walked to our hostel, and got a 8 bed dormetry. We slendered to the beach to have a swim, and cool our bodies down. We were both knackered, and couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer, so at 7.30 pm we went to bed. 

Our "comfortable" home for 11 hours

Houses in Haiphong

Ready to hit the road

The precious "speedboat" 

Finally arrived on Cat Ba Island

China conclusion

Conclusion after our first month (in the land of the small yellow people):

• We packed to much stuff. 
• We didn’t forget anything.
• We have been lucky with the weather (sunny between 25-30 degrees almost every day, around 3 hours of rain in total). 
• We’re under our budget, used aprox. 11500 kr. (monthly budget is 14000 kr.), and this is even the most expensive country in Asia, that we’re gonna visit.

About China and our discoverys so far:

You have to apply to get a licence plate for your car, this happens through a random lottery that they do once every month. If you’re lucky you get it within a few days, if you’re unlucky you can wait for several months, before you can get your car on the road.

In 2008, when Beijing held the Olympic games, the goverment wanted to teach, chinese people the keep-in-line culture, because it dosen’t excist here. So they made the 11^th every month, a keep-in-line day. We haven’t discovered that it works, and really don’t believe, that one day in a month is enough to teach chinese people this.

Chinese people have really low hygiene, close to none. 

The way they handle food, would never happen in Denmark (people would be put in jail, if they treaded food like that). 

Only very few wash their hands after toilet visits. 

They cough without, holding a hand in front of their mouth. 

Many men, have longer finger nails than women, and some have only one, VERY long finger nail, the reason for these long nails (told to us by two different chinese people), is so that they can get their noses and ears picked easily… And they do this everywhere.

In 5 weeks, we have seen less than 10 chinese people brush their teeth (in trains & several hostels) no wonder half of them are missing 80 % of their teeth… 

Ambulances dosen’t usually have the sirene turned on, only the blue/red lights. Cars, motorbikes, trucks etc. isn’t gonna pull over “just” because somebody needs to go to the hospital, they don’t care, they have their own lifes to worry about. So maybe you can imagine, how they treat animals!?

Chinese people eat noodles constantly, it dosen’t matter if it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner. 

They eat noisily, and with their mouths open all the time – which is driving me (E) totally insane!

Chinese kids are adorable. 

Kids from the lover and middle class familys, dosen’t wear diapers, they just wear pants with holes in the back, so that they can pee/shit everywhere.

The chinese people speak, approximately 5 times higher than european people, and this is also a part of their culture, so they aren’t aware of it themselves – even 11 pm (on the phone), in the train, when everybody is gone to bed, and the light has been switched off for more than an hour ago…

The chinese people are the worst at english, below you can see some of the signs, that we came across...

It’s okay :

• to drive a scooter or motorbike with 5 people on it, without helmets
• if you bring your kid(s), also without helmet(s)
• to drive on the sidewalk
• to spit everywhere, even inside restaurants, trains etc.
• to drive/walk into a traffic light even though it’s red
• to throw your trash on the street
• to cut your nails everywhere, trains, supermarkets, restaurants etc.

It’s NOT okay:

• to go outside your home in Shanghai wearing pyjamas
• to put your chop sticks into the rice, and leave them there

 What we miss the most:

1. Cold danish cow milk

2. Dark bread with liverpate, and redbeds (rugbrød med stryhns og rødbeder.

3. Family and friends – remember even though YOU think, nothing new is happing around                 you, we still would like to hear, some life signs from you - it could be just a quick                           message on our blog, or maybe a skype call.

The chinese money:

100 Yuan (90 Dkr) bills are the biggest they have, because the money is being copied all the time. 

The picture on the back of the 20 Yuan bill, is from Yangshuo where we've been. 

And the best of the chinese beers...

Tsing Tao Beer (the best)

Liq Beer  Type 1

Liq Beer  Type 2

The Giant Panda Base

Friday 11^th Oct.

Luckily we felt fine when we woke up, so we left Cosy Garden, and walked towards the bus station. Just the thought of noodles, or any chinese food, made us feel sick again, but we had to find some breakfast for our empty stomachs. Yoghurt was the only thing, that could satisfy us at that moment, but unfortunately hard to find. After going through most of the stores on the way, we ended up finding what we needed. Yeeaah!

We had to get some food for our trainride aswell, the most common thing to bring is cupnoodles, but no way, we were not going down that road again. We got by with fruit, crackers and yoghurt.

In Guilin we got surrounded by a lot of fake cabdrivers, they offer to drive you to all the near by cities, but they only know the city names, or train/busstations, they don’t understand a word of English. To get rid of them, we just mention a city that’s really far away, then they stop following us. Or if we need to kill the time, we sometimes stop, and pretend to be interested, and have a chat with them in chinese/danish. That’s good intertainment.

Since we didn’t book the traintickets, we were kind of excited to see, if there was available tickets left to Chengdu (only one departure each day). Second time this day we got lucky, and just managed to buy the tickets 10 min. before the office closed. The trainride went even smoother this time, and it was even 5 hours longer (almost 25 hours in total). Had hard-sleeper tickets again, this time we both got the top beds. It’s more comfortable up there, cause the people in the isle can’t stare at you, you’re closer to your belongings on the shelf, and it’s actually also the cheapest bed you can get – so that’s a win win win situation!!

Saturday 12^th Oct.

In the morning I was sitting in the isle, reading in our “bible” lonely planet, and at some point I looked up, and around me was 4-5 women, just starring at me. I assume they never saw a light redhaired before, so I said ‘Nihao’ (hey) to them, and they all started giggling, as a bunch of teenagers would do. Well I was in a good mood, so I tried to teach them, some english phrases from lonely planet, and they tried to teach me some chinese. I don’t think, any of us learned anything from that, but it was quite fun and we had a little laugh together. I tried to read again, but they were so curious about my book, that I couldn’t concentrate.

We’ve experienced the chinese curiosity a lot, we’re not sure if its just us, they are curious about or if they’re just curious in general. Anyway they have no sense of keeping a distance to strangers, like if we’re looking, at our map to find our directions, it’s not uncommon that 2-10 people will stop, and just look over our shoulders, not to help, but really just because of their curiosity. That’s something we will never get totally use to (one out of a million things)!

We found a couchsurfer host in Chengdu, eventhough it was with a really short notice (2 days before arrival). We wasn’t exactly sure how to get there, so we started up finding the city center, and a starbucks café, to charge the computer and phone (there’s no power on the trains), so we at least had a chance to contact our host, and ask for further details, about transportation opportunities.  

Eventually we found the right place, and our host Mary picked us up at the busstop. It was a mom and her daughter that should host us, but apparently the daughter is studying in Beijing, so it was only her mom hosting us, who was terrible at English. Oh well it was a free place to crash, so we didn’t care.

We lived in a very local part, and were both very sceptical, when we walked through the area, which mostly looked like an old ghetto, with ancient builings, dirty streets, dogs barking and small shops with local articles.

The entrance to the building, definitely didn’t look inviting, and the lights didn’t work in the lower part of the stairways (we lived on 4^th floor). It was so dirty and disgusting, that we almost turned around again, ready to book a hostel instead. If the apparentment had been in the same conditions inside, we would have left immediately. But to our big surprise, it was clean and neat, and we got our own room with a bathroom (even with a western toilet), so we couldn’t complain at all.

We communicated with our host through google translate, it took a while but we managed to understand each other this way. She offered to cook dinner for us, but we had already eaten, and was still not ready for chinese dishes, specially not meat, so we lied to her, and told her we were vegetarians, and wasn’t hungry. We wanted to avoid getting sick again, and also because we saw how the meat was treated, just outside her apartment. We arranged that she should cook for us the day after, but vegetarian food.  

She showed us a massage place, it was 35 RMB (32,5kr) for an hour. We couldn't reject that offer, so we went there later. It was one big room with 4 massage beds, no curtains in between. Chinese massage is without oil, and with clothes on, so that makes sense with the social room. You get what you pay for, so there were a lot of noise from other customers, the tv, the masseuses and a guy playing loud games on his phone. The massage was okay, and well worth the money.   

Mary was really interested in our country, eventhough it didn’t seemed like she knew where it’s located. She wanted to see the danish money, and had a lot of questions for us. She realized how small Denmark is, when we told her that the population in Denmark is half as many, as the population in Chengdu.

My new curious friends, from the train, (several horses would be jealous on those teeths).

Very cosy bedroom in Chengdu

Amazing view from the balcony at out host Mary

Sunday 13^th Oct.

Got up really early to make sure, that we would make it in time to the Panda breeding base. We took the public transportation to get there, which is always a challenge in China.

The pandas are most active, when they eat in the morning, and we got there just in time, to see both adults and young pandas eat. They’re so cute, and really lazy creatures. We saw the panda nursery aswell, they are extremely tiny when they are borned, around 120-150 g. Would fit perfectly into a pocket! The black spots first start to appear after 2-3 weeks. This breeding center, is the one that breeds giant pandas, to the rest of the worlds  zoo’s (or the few zoo’s around the world that has giant pandas), a really nice experience to see these animals, that’s most likely to be extinquished from the nature, within the next couple of decades. L

After the panda park, we took the bus into Chengdu downtown, to have a good solid meal in the afternoon, in case we didn’t like the food, our host would serve us… We shared a very expensive pizza (99 RMB), and walked around for quite a while, cause we hadn’t got a good map over Chengdu – but eventually we found the right bus, and got home to a delicious homemade vegetarian dinner, with rise, eggs, potatos and a lot of vegetables. Maybe it’s not the last time, we have become vegetarians on this trip.

It was a short visit in Chengdu, and we basically only went there, to see the giant pandas. We’re happy, that we decided to do so, since China is the home-country of them, and they are their most respected, and beloved animals (beside the dragons). Not seeing the pandas, while you’re in China, would be the same as, not seeing the pyramids, while you’re in Egypt!

One of the better public busses... 

Little cute one

Ohhh 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10....

Panda playground

Lazy red pandas chilling after breakfast


And of course a little video of the cute pandas

Monday 14^th Oct.

So... the next morning we left Chengdu, with another (and hopefully the last in China) hard-sleeper train towards Kunming (the capital in the Yunnan province). Actually our plans were to travel, to the north of the province, but because we have got so tired of the chinese people, and our constantly communication problems with them, we decided that 5+ weeks in China must be enough, and now we wanna try something new, and hopefully within the next couple of weeks, being able to find a beach, with some nice cold drinks.

Well… As we were waiting for the train, at the departure hall, we were surrounded by old, dirty chinese men, and we prepared ourselves, that this train ride, probably would be the worse. The older men spit, smoke and smell, plus they are REALLY loud, so this was gonna be a hell of a ride – and as Jannik told us in Shanghai: Remember kids – in hell the time stands still!!!

None of us believe in god, but someone must have hold their hands over us, because as the gate opened, and all of us walked towards the train, we realized that there was 2 trains departing, at the same time, and most of all these old men, were going with the other train. Such a relief, and the train ride (20 hours) were just like the others we did.

Trainride to Kunming

Cracker woman

My little nerd

Tuesday 15^th Oct.

Once again we arrived just on time, and we quickly found our bus (we always right up the directions, and bus numbers before going to a new place, so that we know exactly what to do upon arrival), towards the hostel, that we decided to go to. We didn’t make a reservation, but got a 4 bed dormitory (for 45 Yuan each pr. night). We checked the wifi connection, which was the worse we have had so far!

W e found some dark bread at a bakery nearby, and made some danish style sandwiches, for both dinner, and lunch the next day.

Well anyways we had to figure out, several things concerning the transportation to Vietnam, and what to do at the border, when entering Vietnam. We agreed to stay 2 nights in Kunming, and I went to the reception to book the next night in advance, so we were sure to have a room, unfortunately the reception girl couldn't think longer, than I can throw a full grown buffalo, so I got really annoyed of her, not understanding me. I didn’t want to stay there another night, if they were that stupid. Went back to Erik and told him about it, and we decided to book another hostel for the upcoming night. Was really tired of chinese people not understanding simple things, our patience has run out.

Next day at the new hostel we ordered rice for dinner, but guess what! They ran out of rice… and beef. How can a restaurant in China run out of rice, I still don’t get it. China is the country of rice. What, no rice? Really!!?

Earlier same day we tried to order fried vegetables, but got rare vegetables, they didn’t know what fried ment, eventhough they had tons of fried-rice on their menu card. We left the restaurant, shaking our heads, without eating or paying... Instead we found some fresh made sushi, from a hole-in-the-wall kitchen (street kitchen).

Now we were as ready as ever to leave China.

GOODBYE CHINA!!!

Shopping streetfood again

Fresh made sushi.. No rare meat, but can tuna and vegetables.. Yummi..!

Beautiful Yangshuo

Sunday 6^th Oct.

A smoking hot morning when we left the hostel, heading to Yangshuo. Leah and another girl (Livia from Switzerland), was going in the same direction, so we all shared a cab, to the bus station, and took a 1½ hour busride south.

The hostel Cozy Garden in Yangshuo was a little out of town, but at this point we were very desperate to get to a quiet place. We walked for half an hour, to get there and it was just as expected. Quiet and peacefull with only the sounds of bugs, birds and frogs, and the stunning views over the limestone mountains. We booked a 4 bed dormitory room, and luckily they put Leah in the same room as us.

We had a little chat with the hostel manager, and he had a lot of great suggestions of what we should do, while we were in Yangshuo. There’s was a lot of hiking, biking and bamboo rafting to do, but he also mentioned a scooter trip in the mountains, kayaking and bridge jumping.

This was a perfect place for us to stay for some days, since we like all the outdoor activities. 

The first day we started out slowly, with renting bikes and went to the river to have a swim. When we got down to the river, after some steep steps, the view was amazing. There were these massive limestone mountains along the river, and as far as your eye could see, it was just pure nature, really unique surroundings. We were all by ourselves (Erik, Leah & I), except for that digging machine on the other side of the river, quiet noisy actually. But we went for a beautiful swim, and felt new-borned afterwards. 
We biked into town, only 10 min away, checked out the area, and compared the prices on all the different activities. 
We found a nice, and decent priced, local restaurant to enjoy lunch at. We’re starting to like chinese dumplings a lot, it’s just steamed wonton dough with all kinds of filling! Delicious! 

We went to meet up with Livia at Monkey Janes rooftop bar, perfect timed, cause we came just when “happy hour” started. What a coincidence! We watched the sunset from there, while organizing what to do the upcoming days.

When it got dark we walked downtown, which was redicouilious packed with Chinese tourists (the last day of the Chinese holiday). We very quickly got annoyed of all the people, so we ate some spontaneous streetfood, and went to a quite bar afterwards.

When heading home on our bikes, it had become really dark and the last part of our bikeride, was gonna be interesting, cause there was no streetlights, and we forgot our headlamps.

We got extremely lucky, so just when we went from streetlight into the darkness, a car pulled up behind us, and he lead us the whole way to the hostel with his lights. I don’t think I have ever riden a bike that fast, cause all the time we were affraid that he would pas us, and then we wouldn’t be able to see the road. Off cause we could walk the distance, but it wouldn’t have been that interesting and breathtaking.

The last person in our room was a French guy (Olivier) that had arrived when we got back. He was willing to join us the next day on a bamboo raft and bike tour.

Just arrived in Yangshuo, with Livia & Leah

Our neat hostel

The front terrace

Happy puppies, having their first svim on their trip

Monday 7^th Oct.

We booked bikes and the hostel arranged a bambooraft for us, went to pick up Livia, and then we were all set and ready to go.

We got a big raft that could fit 14 people, but we were only the 5 of us. It had an engine on, so it wasn’t really a raft, but that was the only boat that could fit our bikes and us. 
Our captain was a friendly english speaking chinese guy, and second captain was his 5 years old son. 
While we were cruising down the river, he started up a party on the boat with really loud music, all kinds of Chinese club music, and off cause “gangnam style”. It was actually better than the sound from of engine, so we enjoyed it and had a good laugh of him and his kid dancing.
The scenery was stunning and breathtaking, and you just never got tired of looking into the horizon, and on all the beautiful limestones. On the riversides we saw a bunch of water buffalos, and the fishermens fish cages, and their shelters.

We got dropped off in Liugong with our bikes, and had lunch at the only restaurant in town, just by the river. I ordered a seaweed egg soup (by mistake) I thought it came with noodles. But it was just seaweed (that wasn't rinsed properly so it really tasted like sea) and egg. The soup tasted like sticking your tongue out of the window. So that’s not recommendable. And after that I discovered, that they have that soup everywhere. Disgusting!!!

We biked through the mountains and a lot of small villages. We passed a snake on the road, it was alive but didn’t move, and we realized that it had been run over and was injured. So we stopped and helped it out from its misery. Erik threw a big stone towards it a few times, until we could declare it dead. One less to be affraid of, but even though it was a snake, it still hurts my heart to see them suffer.

Well, we biked for a few hours before we got to our next planned stop “Gold water cave”, with both mud and hot spring baths. Our guide took us on a little tour in the caves. Our guide dared us, if one of us would climb through a VERY tiny hole, with an opening in the end. Brave Erik did it (of cause) and he could barely fit in there, and when you first climbed in there, there was no turning back. So we went to the other side, where he came out and seriously, that climb was as narrow as him. But well done.

Off to the mud bath, that was a funny and different experience, almost as the dead sea in Israel, where you float easily because of the salt contents. This was just way thicker, and an undescribeable weird feeling. We definitely felt like our cells had been cleaned out afterwards. The hot spings was nice too.

On the road again back to Yangshuo. We actually got comfortable in the traffic, it’s pretty much just about who’s biggest and loudest, then just follow the traffic and don’t stop. If a car is parking right in front of you, just go around it, cause the people behind you is expecting you to do so. People are walking on the streets a lot, and you just gotta ring your bell, or be loud so people know you’re right behind them, they won’t move to the side but they know you’re there. Quiet funny when you first get into it. We drove directly to Monkey Janes rooftop bar, and got what we deserved from a day filled with activities: A ice cold Tsingtao beer!! Also a great place to watch the sunset again.

Dinner got enjoyed at the same restaurant as lunch the day before. We found that very good and everything was homemade.

Fishermens (not the drink) shelters

Local fisherman having lunch

Beautiful young people

Chinas answer to "babybjørn"

My overwhelming seaweed egg soup

This guy wanted money from us for taking this picture - but now we're making him famous instead.. Share!! 

Gorgeous Guangxi province

APPROVED China

DECLINED China

Erik and his sweet escape

96% immigrants (negerbasser)

The Yangshuo gang 

Yangshuo Boat & Bike Tour

Sunset Yangshuo

Tuesday 8th Oct.

Early in the morning we rented scooters from the hostel, went to pick up Livia. 

We had a route that we should follow, cause otherwise we would get lost. Paul (the hostel manager) told us, that whenever there’s an option to go left or right, you always should choose right and then we wouldn’t get lost, so that’s what we did. 

Our first stop was at a tea plantation, we got there really early in the morning so they were barely opened yet, but the girl there, was happy to see us, and told us a little bit about the plantation. 

We didn’t want to pay for a tour around there, since we could see all the trees already. She invited us to a so called tea ceremony, which we agreed to do. 
Before we got to taste the tea, there was a bunch of different traditions that we had to go through, one of them was to wake up the leaves with hot water, the weirdest thing was, when she finally had made the tea and put it in our cups, she immideately took the cups again, and poured the tea out on her tea-pet (a wooden frog in the corner of her table). Apparently it’s for good luck. We were looking at each other, and didn’t know if we should laugh or cry. 
Eventually we got to taste the tea, and it didn’t taste of normal tea, that we’re use to, but more like the seaweed egg soup I had the day before. But we forced ourselves to drink it, and pretended that we enjoyed it, kept reminding each other that it was free.

We almost didn’t meet any other tourists on our whole way through the mountains, small villages and huge fields. It was an amazing and untouched part of China, and we enjoyed it a lot. Erik even let me drove some of the way, which is a big step for mankind!!

We stopped by a bridge (dragon bridge) cause Erik, Leah and Olivier wanted to jump from it (I didn’t dare). I just wanted to go for a swim. After a while of re-thinking it, the tough guys, and even tougher Leah, did the jump (Oliver and Erik did it twice). It was around 7-8 meters. I must say, it seemed higher, but you gotta start slowly and then work your way up.

In the evening we went to a very famous, and well known show called “Impression of Sanilje”. A water show where they use their unique surroundings (the limestone scenery), and there’s about 600 actors. We were impressed the first 5 min, and a few times during the show, but only for a very short period of time. There was no story told, it was just different scenes with no harmony, it had absolutely no action, and the music was just putting you to sleep. We were surprisingly impressed of how boring it was, even though they had the best opportunities, to make the best show in the world, they still screwed that one up. 
We had really high expectations and 4 of us walked away very disappointed, while 1 thought it was the best she had ever seen. Maybe it’s all about the expectations, or maybe it’s just a lame show. 

Me & Erik went out for beers/drinks afterwards, and ended up finding a place, where we could smoke waterpipe (shisha), and had a great time there. This night we had brought our headlamps, so didn’t have to worry about biking in the dark. We got home around 1am.

Retards

Scooter Trip

Bridge Jump Syncro

Wednesday 9^th Oct.

Slept in and stayed in bed until noon, this day was a resting day, and time to accumulate all our impressions from the last couple of days. 
We made some research for our next destination, which was suppose to be the Yunnan province, but we changed the plans, because we realized that we wanted to see, the panda sanctuary and breeding base, in Chengdu. We still want to visit the Yunnan province, but we can do that on the way south again. 
Erik went to buy train tickets for us, to Chengdu, but the office was already closed. 
We agreed on leaving the next morning, and hoped that there would still be, some hard-sleeper train tickets available by then. 
It was our last night in Yangshuo, so we deciced to eat at our favorite local restaurant, together with Leah, Olivier & Livia (and a guy she met).
We went to smoke waterpipe again, and after a while both Erik & I wasn’t feeling good, so we decided to drive back to the hostel straight away.

The whole night we got more and more sick, and none of us had a prober sleep, we spend most of the time in the bathroom. We definitely had food poison and even from our “favorite” restaurant. We all had shared the same dumplings, and Olivier was sick as well, but in a better shape than us, Leah didn’t get sick at all.

Our "favorite" restaurant

Last night in Yangshuo

Thursday morning we very quickly agreed, that we were NOT gonna be able to travel anywhere. So lucky that we didn’t get the train tickets the day before, cause they wouldn’t be refundable. 
And actually also lucky that both of us were sick, it makes it more understandable when you feel the same way. 
We dragged ourselves to go for a swim in the afternoon, which was refreshing but we still felt exhausted. Time to say goodbye to Leah, that we spend the last week with, and Olivier that we spent 4 days with.

We had the room to ourselves, and got all our stuff packed, ready to leave in the morning.
Went to bed with fingers crossed, that we were gonna feel total fine the next day.

To be continued.....