BLOG OF THE RISING SUN: 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.