Korea

Having travelled from Seoul to Sokcho, having hiked in Seorak National Park, having slept in a temple near GyeongJu and having spent some days in Busan it is now time to move on. The highlights were certainly the different hiking trips...Korea is perfect for that. There are thousands of possibilities and many parks even in the city centers offer the opportunity to hike. National Parks are, of course, even better.

Busan is a nice city at the souther coast of Korea. We enjoyed our last days here pretty much even though the weather was quite bad today with a heavy wind and some rain. Tonight we ll take the night train to Seoul, arriving there at 4am. From there we take the plane to Taipei.

The night we passed at Golgulsa Temple is probably THE highlight because it was something so different and new. We learned a lot about buddhism and about the history of monks in Korea. Korean history is very interesting and full of wars and battles. Some museums we have visited are definetly worth the visit (Seoul Museum of History for instance). GyeongJu, the old capital of the Silla dinasty, is still full of historic places and a walk through the city center is a must.

For those not so much interested in history, nightlife is great, many streets have thousands of bars and coffee shops. Shopping facilities are everywhere, the world's biggest shopping mall is in Busan and you can find everything...

Korea

Finally I can access this blog again and can write something about Korea. When we arrived in Seoul on Monday we had the impression that we just landed in paradise. The city seemed so well organized and people seemed just normal...that does not mean that Chinese are not normal but some of the habits in China were simply not easy to adapt to.

Anyways, Seoul kept us busy cause there are many things to see and we only had little time for all the stuff. The flight arrived around lunch time if I remember well. As soon as we found our Hostel which was next to one of the univesities (something with S but names are too complicated to remember here), we started walking around. We went to a palace, a park, saw some of the famous shopping streets and so on...Next day was busy as well, went to two other palaces, the Seoul museum of history (which is great), assisted an architectural event (we kind of slipped into that event by error and stayed there...there was a huge building and the architect said that it could change its face by simply moving the building, like a dice or a cube, on another face. He demonstrated it by letting some cranes push the building on another face...quite interesting to see), went to a big market quater with millions of small shops and walked to the Seoul Tower which is on a little mountain.

During that day we met many people, most of the time Koreans who wanted to share some of their culture with us. One guy talked to us at lunch and told us to see some coupleof things in the city. One person we met during dinner spoke pretty good German. The language skills of Koreans are definetly good, and they are all very nice.

Yesterday we moved on to Sokcho which is at the Korean East Coast. The Seorak national park is next to that small city and we wanted to spend a day here and hike through the mountains. We did that today and it was amazing. You can see pictures on picasa.

Tomorrow we move on, we go to Gulgasa, which is a temple north of Busan. We stay there over night (templestay program). After that we might stay a day in the region and continue our way to Busan. It s a pitty that we only have 10 days for Korea. Have the impression that I could spend a year here.

simatei ou la campagne chinoise

Aujourd'hui nous avons prévu d'aller à la grande muraille. On est toujours dans la voiture pour aller dans un coin au Nord est de Pékin. Ici la muraille n'a pas été reconstruite comme a badalin donc c'est moins touristique mais plus intéressant! Cependant c'était un vrai combat pour y aller. On s'est levé à 5 heures du matin afin de prendre le metro et un bus qui nous sors de la ville. Ici déjà en ville personne parle anglais ou seulement des mots, donc on demande aux filles de l'hostel de nous écrire en chinois le chemin. Quand on va a la campagne c'est encore pire. Une fois qu'on avait trouvé le bon bus on espérait que le chauffeur allait nous prévenir quand il fallait descendre. Il l'as fait. Très bien. A l'arrêt une horde de chauffeurs de voitures attendaient pour vendre leur service de voiture jusqu a la muraille qui est a 90 km. On nous a proposé 200 yuan mais c'est trop cher. On a attendu et négocié un peu. Un autre bus est arrivé et un canadien est descendu. Tout de suite nous avons parlé avec lui afin de partager un voiture. Il a obtenu un meilleur prix avec un autre chauffeur et était ok pour partager. Mais les autres chauffeurs n'étaient pas content. On s'était déjà installé dans la voiture quand ils sont arrivés et ont essayé de nous tirer de la voiture. Ca criait, ca se battait et nous on était dans la voiture... Un peu effrayé par la situation. Finalement notre chauffeur s'est sauvé dans la voiture aussi. Mais le concurrent s'est assis sur le capot. Le nôtre a accéléré et a fait tomber son concurrent et est lui roulé dessus. Assez choquant. De la voiture notre chauffeur a appelé la police et on doit aller au commissariat après la visite. On verra bien comment ca se passe... Il faut savoir que faire les vacances ici est une aventure, surtout quand on s'éloigne de la grande ville! Je vous tiens au courant! D'ailleur il pleut des cordes ici... Sympa pour faire une balade de 3h sur la muraille.

beijing

Nous sommes bien arrivés à Pékin. J'écris de mon portable car l'internet ne marche pas bien dans l'auberge. Nous habitons dans un hu tong à fu cheng men qui est proche de la cité interdite. Nous avons déjà fait une première balade dans le beihai park. Les hu tong sont des quartiers ancien, avec plein de petites ruelles, peu éclairé la nuit mais culturellement très intéressant. Les maisons dépassent rarement les deux étages et on y vit assez bien. Pékin est complètement différent de hong kong. Il faut que j'avoue que je suis déjà un peu tombé amoureux de Pékin, une ville qui est très agréable a voir. Les maisons donnent envie d'y vivre, je n'ai pas encore vu ces grans bâtiments gris et laid qui caractérisent Hongkong. A Pékin on voit beaucoup de monuments historiques ce qui fait plaisir! Je me suis fait presque écrasé par une voiture mais notre ami australien, rencontré dans l'auberge, m a sauvé. Il nous a donné plein de conseils pour les endroits à visiter en chine. Il termine son tour de 3 semaines. On va peut être changer notre itinéraire alors. Un peu moins Pékin, même si je regrette, et un peu plus les montagnes vers XI an qui sont vraiments magnifiques. Je vois tiens au courant mais j'ai peur que blogger soit bloqué par les autorités chinoises et c'est un peu chiant d'accéder par portable...

Macau

Today we decided to go to Macau so we got up early...at least we tried...and we went to the harbour. Unfortunately to the wrong one but that didn t matter so much because the good one was noot too far away. The trip to macau was ok, at the beginning I was feeling a little sick due to the waves.

Macau is a sad place, sad because they have plenty of opportunities to make it a cutlurally interesting and amawing place, there are old pagodas and there are the old castles and houses of the portugese....but they prefer to build casinos and hotels. The casinos try to imitate Las Vegas without success.

Pictures

You can see all my pictures on Picasa

second day Hong Kong

Our second day in Hong Kong was less intensive. Yesterday we walked a lot and were really exhausted. Stanley, Mei Foo and Hong Kong was a bigger program than we thought. The second day was a bit more relaxing eventhough we saw quite a lot of things.

The morning we went to Aberdeen which used to be a little fisher village. Now grey and boring buildings make this place rather unalluring. The river or sea there is full of fisher boats and there are some floating restaurants. Some ships were offering their service to bring us to these restaurants but we refused. Another restaurant in Aberdeen had already catched our attention. there was indeed a place where people were queuing and we thought "that must be an excellent place".

When we started queuing we realized that no one around us was speaking english. After a couple of minutes we understood that we needed to go into the restaurant and take a "waiting number". 33 was our number and the first thing we did was to ask the people around us how to pronounce that. The waiter was coming out and screaming a number from time to time and we wanted to be sure not to miss our turn.

33 finally came and they assigned us two seats in the restaurant. The menue was, of course, in chinese, but we did as usual...we looked at our neighbours table and ordered the same. This time: chicken legs and some rice...for me the first time and probably the last...

After this quite surprising experience we went to the Victoria Peak. Hong Kong island has a peak of some 554 meters and a cable car leads to the peak from downtown HK. The view from the peak was amazing eventhough we had some dust...but still, the city and the landscape looked fantastic.

The hot weather made the program for the afternoon less intensive. We decided to take the subway to Tsuen Wan. A "new city"...our guide seemed to be fascinated by that place...we could not discover why. Once again we saw a grey, polluted, crowdy place. Nothing exciting here but as we were already there we decided to take a walk in this city. From mall to mall, from park to park...we finally reached the river and decided to leave this place as quick as possible.

First day Hong Kong and Stanley

For the pictures it won t be possible right now because this computer is too slow. I have tried fro 50 minutes now...

The first day was great. We started with a little sight seeing at downtown HK...very impressive because very modern, clean and dynamic. The malls are new, the streets are clean, traffic is ok and public transport excellent. I have thought that this would be Singapore only but HK is clearly close.

After this little visit we went to Stanley, a former village for pirates and fishers. Now it is mainly a tourist place but the bus which took us to Stanley passed by very nice bays. We enjoyed that trip very much, although the driving style of the bus was kind of interesting. But whatever. Stanley has two nice pagodas, one known by the tourist guides which is very boring and not very impressive because very small and the other one we discovered by chance which is much nicer and not mentioned by any word in the guide.

After we tried to visit a village that was supposed to be quite old and the pp were supposed to be dressed in an ancient way. You reallized all the supposings? Yep, we couldn t find it and no one there could help us to find it...seems that the guide has some strange ideas of HK...but we found a nice park just next to that place so our trip to the neighbourhood wasn t a total failure.

At night we walked to the sea which was quite exhausting because we had already spend all day walking...but it was great to see all the skyscrapers in different coulors. quite impressive.
We then returned to Hong Kong station to have a little drink before returning to the hostel.

Arrival

We arrived well in Hong Kong, the flight was calm and the service on board quite good! What we have seen so far impresses us a lot, the city looks very dynamic and young.

It was difficult to find the hostel because it is really well hidden. But the people there seem very nice...the room is however pretty small...but guess that it is ok for a couple of days.

Departure

That's it, I just checked in, I have my boarding pass and guess that all should be fine now. The flight to Zurich is scheduled to leave at 6:45pm and the flight at Zurich is scheduled for 10:45pm. Weather should be good on Friday when we arrive in HK. We'll arrive in Hong-Kong Friday 4:40pm and have a time difference of 6 hours compared to France.

We'll stay in HK till September 1st. At 8:30am, September 1st we'll take the plane to Beijing.

Last days

Today was a decisive day for this trip. I bought so many things and the list of things to buy narrowed significantly today. From the mosquito net to a tiny sleeping bag, from sandals to the malaria pills… tomorrow I'll try to put all to the backpack in order to see how much it weights and to see whether I have a margin to take some souvenirs and buy stuff there.

I have marked the different steps of the second part of the trip on this map. The map on the previous article shows the first part of the trip. We may change some of these depending on hints from people there.

Found also some facts about Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Singapore. And some pictures of course...

Travel preparation

Everyone has kind of the same troubles when preparing such a long trip. The preparation phase is sometimes rather exhausting. I have seen the doctor twice for a medipack and vaccinations and I have waited two long hours at Air France Vaccination center to get vaccinations that the doctor couldn’t do. So far I have also taken care of the China and Vietnam visa. Next steps are to see what kind of clothes and material I’ll take with me. Probably not so much because I can buy things there and it would be great if I could leave with a bag that gives some space for souvenirs and stuff like that.

Started contacting everyone I know there in order to get some people to show us around and help us to orientate. Also have kind of an interview with a headhunter in Vietnam. Maybe if everything goes well I’ll stay there directly ; - ) I am still studying Vietnamese and bought a book for Chinese in order to have at least some little basics. Guess that it won’t help so much to learn the language three weeks before the departure but it also helps to understand the culture a bit.
Nothing new apart from that. Keep you updated.

(picture taken by Philippe "Nudel" in New Zealand)

Sinn und Zweck

From end of August on I'll be travelling in Asia, and I would like to share some of the impressions and talk a bit about what I see there.

Where will I go to you might wonder? End of August my trip starts with the flight to Hong-Kong. There I’ll stay a couple of days before flying to Beijing. From Beijing I’ll go to Xian. From Xian the way continues to Dalian, Qingdao and Shanghai. That’s it for the China part. Now we’ll make a little hop and go to South Korea. Having spent there a couple of days, discovering the country, the trip continues to Taiwan. Same procedure there. Afterwards my itinerary leads me to Vietnam, I will travel from Hanoi to Saigon and from there enter Cambodia and Laos. The last step of the trip will then be Singapore. Beginning December I’ll be back in good old Europe.

During the next weeks I try to post some articles about the countries and cities I will travel through.