Yangtze-river cruise

LUXUS! That is the only word to describe our cruise on the Yangtze. When we arrived to the port there was a guy carrying our luggage. Then we went to our cabin...NAIJS. We had a corner cabin in the back of the ship, very nice view, two large windows and a balcony. Excellent soft beds compared to the ones we had before in China, hot water as much as we wanted and we also had the bar on the same floor. Almost heaven.

The weather was quite foggy when the ship departed so we were quite worried if we could even see the amazing view we had read about. We had a good dinner the first night and went to bed.

Next morning we had a quite early breakfast (at least in our standards) and then we had an excursion to the ghost city. There was a temple on top of a mountain, me and Esa took a chair-lift to the top since we where still recovering from the stomach flu. On the top there was temple where they checked who belongs where and then there was hell where apparently most of the people belong. On the way back we had to choose a between two bridges, other one was for health and other one for wealth. My strong suite is financing so I decided that wealth is a given so I chose health, but Kennet and Esa chose wealth cause they don't have the head for investing, but at least now they will die young and rich. Najs.

After we returned to the ship it was time for lunch. It was always western style buffet and we loved it, every day. It was actually better than the Chinese style set dinner we had in the evenings. But you can't beat a buffet, all you can eat after all! In the Restaurant we had the same seats every time and we were seated with a really nice American family from Minnesota. Their son was studying in Beijing and the whole family had joined him to spend the Christmas in China.

Next day it was time for an excursion to the lesser three gorges. We took a smaller boat to go up the smaller river and then changed to even smaller boat to go up even smaller stream. The scenery was again unbelievable. The best part was that towards the end of the day the weather cleared and the sun started to shine. We got some really nice pictures.

When we returned to the ship it was time for lunch again. After that we went to the bar with Kennet for couple of drinks and to admire the nice scenery. We joined the couple westerners drinking wine in the bar and soon all the western people were in the same huge table drinking wine. We met a banker who was working somewhere in southern China for Citybank, one family who lived in Hong Kong who we actually visited later and then the Kagin family who had been eating in the same table than we. We made some new friends and drink a lot of free wine (free for us, not for them :D) and had a lot of fun...Esa also had a lot of fun playing Nintendo DS in the Cabin.

The next day was our last on the cruise. We had an excursion to the worlds largest dam, the three gorges dam. The weather was quite foggy so we couldn't see the whole dam from the other side but it was still really impressive. The dam is about 2,3 km long, the maximum capacity of power it can produce is 22,500 megawatts, the reservoir for the dam is 660km long and more than a kilometer wide, they used 27,200,000 cubic tonnes of concrete and 463,000 metric tonnes of steel to build it. Impressive, yes. Actually the water level on the Yangtze river had risen more than 50 meters and whole cities have been covered under water. Millions of people had to move to new cities.

In the afternoon we arrived to Yichang and we had already booked a flight to Shanghai. Our "Christmas cruise" was quite expensive but it was a nice bit of luxury on our China-tour and we really enjoyed it.

-Samuli

Xi´an

We arrived to Xi'an after a long (and for some a sleepless) night on the train. The chinese trains were actually a positive surprise. They were clean, beds were a bit softer than wood and thank god smoking was prohibited in the cabins. 6 beds in one cabin so not that much headroom.

We arrived to Xi'an around 7 am. We were quite tired but we still had to find our hostel before we could take a little morning nap. This proved to be more difficult than expected since we only had the address but we had no idea where it was on the map, because it was on a small street that didn't show on the bigger maps and nobody seemed to know the western alphabets. Finally we found a guy who could show us the address on our map. We took a taxi to our hostel, checked in and slept for couple of hours. Then it was time to explore the city and try to buy the train tickets to Chongqing which was the starting point of our Yangtze-river cruise. We didn't get them on the day we had planed but the day after that, so we had one extra day to spend in Xi'an. The overall look of the city was quite nice, at least the main streets. The old city center was surrounded by city walls and in the center of all this was the old clock tower. The first day we just walked around the city and the wall surrounding it. In the evening we went to see a "water show". A huge fountain are with changing lights and music. Najs. After ate in a fast food chain called "best food", whole grilled chicken was about 1,5 euros.

(City wall in Xi'an)(Water sports) (Pagoda desu)

For the next day we had booked a tour to see the Terra Cotta soldiers. We were very fortunate to be accompanied by a Bangladeshian university professor who was also very stylishly dressed. Our tour guide (named Bruce Lee) had probably the worst jokes you can imagine and the professor always thought he was talking the truth and asked even more stupid follow up questions. For example: "The people who lived in this village thousands of years ago hunted deer and dinosaurs on those mountains. :D" - "Hmmmm...But dinosaurs lived millions of years ago?" (with a heavy Indian accent) - REALLY??? After a visit to a museum of some ancient village inhabited by "Banpo people". Some interesting folks they were. Women were in charge and had their own huts. Every night all the men were lined up and the women picked their companion for the night, usually different one every night so marriage was not a know concept.

After this we had the most expensive lunch on our whole trip in China. And as we later found out it wasn't just the price that was fucked up.

We finally arrived to the Terra Cotta exhibition place. Our guide told us two things we should remember: "1. don't lose your ticket, 2. don't buy anything from the people trying to sell you junk". After we received our tickets and walked to the entrance gates we found out there was one rule too many for some of us (read Esa) and they had already lost their ticket.

(ASENTO!)

The Terra Cotta soldiers were quite impressive or at least the huge amount of them and the fact that they all looked different from each other. After strolling around the halls build above the Terra Cotta soldiers we headed to the last stop on our tour, a tomb mountain build for the same emperor which the Terra Cottas were guarding. We learned that it took something like 50 years and 100,000 men to build the man-made mountain tomb for the dead emperor. The mountain used to be about 150m tall and 2,5km times 1,5km wide on the bottom. We climbed to the top, came down and then it was time to return to Xi'an. Another on of the modern world miracles witnessed.

(The Tomb)

But the real surprise came in the evening when we realized that the Chinese poisoners had got the best of Master Kennet (worst 24hours of my life I can tell you). We thought we were in the clear with Esa but couple of hours later Esa also started vomiting in every 15 minutes or so. I was the only one who seemed to have escaped the disease...but only for two days as it stroke me the night we had to take the night train to Chongqing. Luckily Kennet and Esa had at least some what recovered. There is not much to tell about our two last days in Xi'an :D. But I can say that the night train to Chongqing was not a pleasant one. One squat toilet for about 100 people. Not very Najs when you need to trough up or take a shit in every 15 minutes. But I survived to fight another day.

-Samuli

The Great Wall

After spending couple of days in Beijing we booked a tour to the Great Wall from our guesthouse. The perk was that this tour wasn't going to take us to the most touristy spot on the wall where most of the other tours from Beijing were heading. We had to take a little bit longer bus ride (which we did not mind) to a more secluded part of the Great Wall and then hike about 10km on the wall to another destination where the bus would pick us up. The only downside was that we had to wake up before 6 am and we would miss our free breakfast :(

The morning arrived and there were 3 tired men dragging their asses to the minibus waiting outside the guesthouse. After snoozing couple of hours on the bus we finally arrived to our destination. And we were very lucky AGAIN with the weather, the sky was clear and blue and no sign of clouds... DE E NAJS!
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9nEPvca4vk )

After a short climb from the village we were standing on the Great Wall. The view was breathtaking. The weather was unbelievably clear compared to the foggy/smog we were used to in Beijing. We had about 20 people in our "group" and we didn't want to get stuck in the end of the line with all the "Samsonite tourists" so we took the lead and pretty soon we had about 1km between us and the majority of the group. We only had our personal local "guides"with us who tried to sell as books and postcards of the wall and when we didn't buy they started following us and telling us facts about the wall as we advanced. This wasn't actually a bad deal because they spoke decent English and knew a lot about the Great Wall even though we knew we would have to buy something in the end. We learned things like some parts we walked were build over 2000 years ago and were untouched and some parts had been reconditioned in the 20th century. About halfway we bought t-shirts that say "I climbed the great wall", nice souvenir. After that our guides turned back for their village waiting for the spring to come so they could plant their sweet corn with the Yuans from our t-shirts. Now that we were walking pretty much on our own we could concentrate on the essential: drinking beer, admiring the scenery and taking tons of pictures.

After many many...many steps and one cold beer (yes, only one) we finally arrived to our final destination. There was only one last challenge to accomplish before we would arrive to the village where the bus was waiting: An aerial ropeway where we had to slide over a lake hanging in the air about 40m above the water. Najs. And nobody even died.

In the end we had to wait about 3 hours for the last people to arrive because we arrived a bit before our agreed time and they were almost two hours late. In the end we still made it back to Beijing before the night and headed straight away to our favourite restaurant: Drum`n Gong.

It was a great day, one of the highlights on our trip in China. One more miracle witnessed with our very own eyes.

-Samuli

Beijing

Arrival
We arrived to Beijing around 8pm local time (China only has one timezone, so it is the same everywhere in China). The place looked totally different then Tianjin. Nice buildings, cleaner, nicer, but still quite smoggy. We took a taxi to the hostel we had reserved (Downtown backpackers), everything went smoothly from that on. Taxis are practically free in China when you are travelling with a few people. Just remember to take a Taxi with a meter. The Hostel was really nice, basic, but good and it arranged a bunch of "fieldtrips" around Beijing, including a hike on the great wall. And that was something we were planning on doing. The rent of a three bed room was more than fair and it included a breakfast, and the staff spoke probably better english then we did. The first meal in China we ate in a nearby place, it seemed to specailize on spicy foods. We had a pot of chicken(with bones) that had some potetoes and paprika in it. Rest of it was pure chili paprikas. Spicy but quite tasty.

(Beijing trainstation)

(Spicy stuff)(Yes, we know!)

Beihai Park, Forbidden things, Being Square
On the first day we did the usual, went to see the Beihai park, the forbidden city (And yes, we fell to the artstudent scam so watch out, art is really cheap in china) and the square of heavenly peace. Too bad it was foggy+smoggy, but still we got some nice pictures. And from somewhere a few soldiers with impressive hats popped up and wanted us to take their pictures. See below. After that we made our first try in haggling. Esa failed miserably.

(Samuli displaying the crane style)

(Cool picture, ugly man)

Conquest of the Great wall of China (own topic see above)
After the Conquest we found a place serving the best chinese food ever, Drum and Gong. After we found that place, we ate there everyday, sometimes twice a day.

The Temple of Heaven, a lot of haggling and gay kungfu
After we had owned the Great wall we decided to go see the famous temple and do some shopping. I think the pictures tell more than words ever could. After the temple we went to do some shopping. Haggling is really fun and it seems I´m quite good at it. We had also a Kungfu show reserved for us trough the hostel. The show wasn´t exactly what we expected. It was actually an act that had kungfu in it. And after the soap bubbles started flying around the feeling couldn´t get much more gay than that even if the actors would wear pink outfits. The Kungfu kids were cool, and the act wasn´t half bad and it had some cool kungfu stunts in it.

(Kungfu crew)

Last full day and the pigneck
Last day had some more shopping in store for us, Hooters, and a party with Carl Cox playing. A few beers, a bit of looking for the club, and then some good techno music including a mix of future sound of london papua new guinea.Next day was just nursing the mild hangover and taking the night train to our next destination: Xi´an.

(Who says finnish people don't know how to dress up?!)

-The Kenu

Ship to China and Tianjin

The Ship

What can I say about the boat. First, it was a few hours late. Second it wasn´t nice. The smell of tobacco everywhere, for obvious reasons we soon found out. Chinese people smoke a LOT. All the time, everywhere. And lucky for us, our airconditioner blew the smoke right into our room. De e najs. The gym the ship should have had was deteriorated into a broken ping pong table. The bar closed at 23. Don´t get me wrong, I´m not complaining, I´m just telling what to expect if you take a boat to China. It wasn´t that bad, the ship had a sauna, and it was a lot cheaper than to fly. So after a few days of Nintendo DS playing, eating cup noodles, drinking beer and getting bored, we arrived to Tianjin China.

(Samuli enjoying the traditional shipbreakfast)

Tianjin
First impression: Shock. The area looked like a warzone. Grey, broken houses and smog everywhere and the home for about 10million people. Immediately there were some taxidrivers screaming at us and offering to take us anywhere... for just the double normal fee. Well, we knew how much it should be to the train station so we haggled, and got a good price in the end. The traffic was insane. 9 cars in 5 lanes. After a hour or so we arrived to the train station and managed to buy the tickets with a little effort. A few hours of waiting and we got on the train. The train was very nice and after a few hours we arrived to Beijing, the olympic city of 2008.

(First contact with chinese pirates)

(English Homepage of the Ferry: http://www.celkobe.co.jp/english/unkou.html )

-The Kenu

Kobe

Kobe the Final stop for our Japan trip. The final rest place before dark and cold China. Arriving to one of the biggest harbours of Japan we proudly found ourselves again in tourist information asking for a place to stay. Oh yes we found a capsule hotel. A place we needed to try atleast once before leaving Japan. We thrust our luggages into one big locker at train station and headed towards Sake factory the tourist informations lady told us about.

Sake factory was pretty cool place it showed the process of making sake and some history of sake aswell. We had no idea that Koji (respects for him) was so big part of making sake. We were shocked. After the museum we had cups of house provided sake and lads bought a bottle for the long boat trip.

When we found our way out of the sake-factory districs back to Koobe it was almost night and we heard there is somekinda walkway passage through illuminated gates in the city. So what the heck we went to check it out. I think the whole Kobe was there. Massed of people walking in a line towards light. We jumped in to line and started our journey towards the light in the end of tunnel. There was like 10 illuminated gates (looked like indian gates).

After the lightly experience we needed some energy and went to have ice cream. The biggest ice cream I´ve ever had. It was sooo good :)

(Eat your heart out Sini!)

(Parking in Kobe)

Then it was time for the capsule hotel. Little pods where you lay and watch tv if you get bored. Included an nice Onsen (japanese bath) too. It wasn´t as good sleep there as i thought and there was no soundproof what so ever. So in the morning when salarymen started waking up at 7 o´clock you could hear their alarm clocks ringing everywhere. But after badly slept night we headed towards the port of Kobe waiting for embarkation to boat which would take us to China.

- Esa

Osaka

Oosaka, Oosaka desu. After Himeji we arrived to Osaka. We instanly head for tourist information to inquire accomodation for one night. And we found pretty nice hotel almost in the centre of Osaka for quite cheap.

After carrying our selves and our luggages to room we headed downstairs and left to explore Osaka. We headed towards Skygarden (or something like that, anyway the tallest building in Osaka). We arrived to spot and what on earth? German-like christmas market. Germans invaded the whole area selling Gluevine and other kinda german stuff there. Because it was pretty cold we decided to have ourselves cups of gluevine. After that we headed up to skygarden and saw the whole Osaka area lighten up since it was dark.

(Bratwurst and Gluevine)

(Drinking beer like a king)

We were itching for clubbing ever since we left Tokyo (read: me and Kennet) so we decided to find a club for the night. We googled and googled and finally found a place. Supposedly a good club with lots of folk.. omg there was like 6 other people including me and Kennet. Music was good for starters but when clock turned 12 it changed to somekinda wierd jungle/ambient. After a while more people started showing up (mostly hippies) and Santos-san was also there with his colleagues dominating the dance floor with InCrEdIbLe moves. We left pretty early around 2 o´clock back to hotel because the next day we had to head for Koobe.

- Esa

Himeiji

After Hiroshima we jumped to a Shinkansen and head to Himeiji. A small city (500.000 inhabitants) in Japanese scale. Home of world famous Himeji castle. We stayed there couple hours wondering around the castle site and visited even the insides of the place. Pretty beautiful from afar but there was nothing to see inside. Just empty rooms and some old stuff aged couple hundred years back. (Notice the size of the person standing infront of the castle)

After castle experience we head to have some lunch. Found nice italian stylish place and had some pasta+pizza there. Himeji is nice place to visit for couple of hours to see the castle otherwise there is nothing else there. It´s only an hour from Kyoto and Osaka so pretty close to bigger cities if you´re visitin them visit Himeji also.

(Samui the samurai)

-Esa

Miyajima Island

Second day in Hiroshima we headed for the nearby island of Miyajima. It is famous for its huge Torii in the water(traditional Japanese gate) and also the great view from the top of the mountain which dominated the island and of course the deer, never forget the deer! We took a local train to port near the island and we didn't even have to pay for the ferry to the island thanks to our Japanese railpasses (benri des). We bought some water and after a quick chat with the deer and couple of pictures in front of the Torii we started our hike to the top of the mountain. After twenty minutes I was already regreting the decisioun of not taking a change t-shirt with me. It was actually not as easy as we anticipated but we had conquered Mt. Fuji and this was a walk in the park compared to that. Finally after many many...many steps we got to the top our fingers crossed that there would be an old guy selling beer AND THERE WAS :D and we were happy. The 360 degree view from the top was amazing and the Asahi was cold and deliciuous. After finishing our beers, admiring the view and taking tons of pictures we started our descent. A lot easier than going up I can tell you.

(Torii)

(This is how you strike a pose)

(Sunshine makes Esa feel victorious)

(najs view from the top)

(Kenu and Samuli, friends of animals)

A german girl (Sandra a.k.a Frau Keßler) studying with us in Tokyo had promised to give us a call when she arrives in Hiroshima so we could meet one last time, but she never called. Later we heard she run out of credit on her phonecard or something... anyway it is a small world as we found out when we accidentaly bumped in to her and Johannes on the ferry back to the mainland. We made some plans for the evening and headed back to our hostel to get a shower. Alltogether Miyajima was a great place at least on a good weather.

-Samuli

Hiroshima

After another very pleasent ride in the Shinkansen (a lot of legspace even for me) we arrived in Hiroshima in the afternoon. We hadn't booked accommodation so the first thing we did was go strait to the tourist information and asked for nice and cheap place to stay in a good location ;D This method works very well in Japan since there is a tourist information in every train station at least in all the decent sized cities and they speak good english too. We got a really nice place (lot nicer than we expected) and it was quite cheap too. Some kind of conference hotel which worked as a youth hostel when there were no big events. We took a tram to the A-bomb dome and walked the rest of the way to the hostel.

In the evening we went to see the some of the Atomic Bomb sites, went to see the Hiroshima Castle, but there was only one "tower" left and we decided not to pay the entrance. After that we went to a nice park near the castle, but I can't remember the name. The sun was just setting and the foliage was still going strong so we got some nice pictures. After this we run into a CoCo Ichi - curry house and couldn't resist and also grabed a couple of beers in an irish pub. The A-Bomb museum was quite shocking and also maid you think about stuff...Definitely worth a visit if you go to Hiroshima.

(Looking cool at the intended bullseye)

(Abomb dome)

(We DON´T buy tickets(Lippuja ei osteta, antaa heittää))

After we met our german friends (Frau Keßler (es ist führ reich) and Johannes) in Miyajima, we maid plans to meet them the same night which was also our last night in Hiroshima. We went together to try the famous Hiroshima style okonomiyaki, which everybody had spoke so highly about in Tokyo...and it WAS good, lot better than the ones we had in Tokyo. We finnished the evening with a bottle of wine in a spanish bar/restaurant. Then it was time to say goodbye to the last JLSP students we were going to see in a while. It felt like the the exchange in Japan was over and now it was time to begin our trip. But still we had couple of days in Japan before heading to China.

(Nuclear nutrition)

Hiroshima was a very nice city, we all agreed on that. Everything was within walking distance (unlike Kyoto) and the public transportation also worked well. All the Atomic Bomb sites were interesting and the highlight was the nearby island of Miyajima, definitely worth a visit. Next destination was Himeiji Castle.

-Samuli