Because all of these aftershocks and the general mood here in Chengdu almost all public school are still closed, this of course leads to me not work which renders me rather worried about not getting enough money for my travels later. I have tried to budget things but if I start working on Wednesday I will still only have about 500 yuan left for my flight ticket back to Sweden, and given how easy it is to do good budget plans for travelling, at least for me, I would say I'm pretty much screwed.
If things are not getting back to normal very soon I have started considering an option, I might actually go home now, well at least within 2 weeks there are still a lot of things to take care of.
Cons for this is that I won't be able to go to Singapore this summer, I won't go to Shanghai either to see Linna and Nana, and Wenying of course but at least I saw her last week. Also my plan was to stay here until June 28Th and leaving a month early I have to quit all my classes, which might make my employers here upset but considering the circumstances I guess they wont argue too much about it. The worst thing is still leaving prematurely, it's on pretty short notice and I will hardly have enough time to say goodbye to my friends here.
Pros for this is that I will be able to join dad's 60Th birthday party, I will make it to cousin Sandra's high school graduation and I might be able to take an exam or two in June. I might also be able to get a summer job, which is both a pro and a con because I had really been looking forward to my first free summer in about 7 years.
I will make this decision before Friday night.
The biggest thing is still my plans for next year, I have for long been considering going to Hong Kong next year and work there for some time but as it is now I will hardly have enough money for it, if I do get a good summer job I might be able to get enough money to actually do it, and not only that I might also be able to visit Singapore on my way there after all.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Between earthquakes and storms
We just had some drinks at the Hemp house garden, Hemp house's own little outdoor serving area, when suddenly a heavy wind rose and started shaking all the parasols and not long after it had started raining heavily. We, who had been considering giving up for a while already decided to ditch the place and go home so we headed down for the street to get a taxi. We stood there looking for a taxi for about 30 minutes in the rain, there were not many out and most of them were taken and the few that weren't ignored us for some reason.
The rain was still very heavy but rather than just standing there in it we decided to take a walk to a "nearby" McDonald's at TianFu square, only about 40 minutes walk it turned out, actually the goal was not TianFu square, I thought there was another one on the way there but that one was not a 24hours one. The one at TianFu was though but they were closed anyone, the staff was there and it was lit, but they had locked it up and when Aaron asked about it they claimed they were "preparing" for the 5am breakfast, it was only about 2am then.
We finally did get a taxi each then and not long after that I was home, just about 2 hours later than expected. Turns out there was a rather big aftershock just before the storm started, I guess it was just strong enough to be felt where we were but all the taxi drivers must have felt it.
The rain was still very heavy but rather than just standing there in it we decided to take a walk to a "nearby" McDonald's at TianFu square, only about 40 minutes walk it turned out, actually the goal was not TianFu square, I thought there was another one on the way there but that one was not a 24hours one. The one at TianFu was though but they were closed anyone, the staff was there and it was lit, but they had locked it up and when Aaron asked about it they claimed they were "preparing" for the 5am breakfast, it was only about 2am then.
We finally did get a taxi each then and not long after that I was home, just about 2 hours later than expected. Turns out there was a rather big aftershock just before the storm started, I guess it was just strong enough to be felt where we were but all the taxi drivers must have felt it.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Day after
Today has been really really boring, first I hardly got any sleep because people kept messaging and calling me, I guess it was hard to sleep anyway because the weather has been really bad, this high pressure humidity that just makes you feel sick. And then all my classes were cancelled today, I suspect they will be tomorrow as well, so I basically slept until 11am and then had like boiled eggs for breakfast, since I actually didn't have anything else and the elevators were still turned off so I couldn't really go out anyway.
There were a few more aftershocks expected during the day and one of the actually managed to make an impression, I was watching a movie then though and it only lasted for like 10 seconds but I think it felt as powerful as the original quake. I spent the day watching South Park and a movie and I baked bread, which turned out great by the way.
In the evening I decided to go out to find some Internet, which the lack of is basically the reason for my extreme boredom these days, and to my extreme joy some of the elevators were up and running again, this made me happy mostly because I ran into some human fesis on my climb up last night, that was NOT pleasant.
Anyway, news has changed and the quake is now deemed to be 7.9 instead of 7.8, there are around ten thousand dead instead of the mere 100, which is horrible by the way, and all of Chengdu is basically stopped, not that anything has happened here. Mostly people has been treating themselves bad, they don't dare to sleep and hardly even stay inside the buildings, I personally find it perfectly fine though.
There were a few more aftershocks expected during the day and one of the actually managed to make an impression, I was watching a movie then though and it only lasted for like 10 seconds but I think it felt as powerful as the original quake. I spent the day watching South Park and a movie and I baked bread, which turned out great by the way.
In the evening I decided to go out to find some Internet, which the lack of is basically the reason for my extreme boredom these days, and to my extreme joy some of the elevators were up and running again, this made me happy mostly because I ran into some human fesis on my climb up last night, that was NOT pleasant.
Anyway, news has changed and the quake is now deemed to be 7.9 instead of 7.8, there are around ten thousand dead instead of the mere 100, which is horrible by the way, and all of Chengdu is basically stopped, not that anything has happened here. Mostly people has been treating themselves bad, they don't dare to sleep and hardly even stay inside the buildings, I personally find it perfectly fine though.
Monday, May 12, 2008
The world is shaking
It was about 2.30pm, I had gone home from my classes early due to a really bad stomach ache that nearly prevented me to stand up in class, in later reflection I think it might have been a warning sign for what was to happen later but I rather think it's just because of my recent travels to different food cultural places. So I was lying in my bed when suddenly I heard squeaking machinery and suddenly my room started shaking in an uncomfortable wobbling way. I was wondering to myself what the hell was going on with the subway construction or whatever and rose out of bed to check what was going on; the crane outside was swinging back and forth and that looked pretty scary, I saw people running around down on the streets and I started hearing the voices of my neighbours as they where gathering up and running out.
I did actually bother to go outside my door too but didn't bother to go any further, I was tired and from what I had seen on the street I figured that it would just be safer to stay, so I went back to bed and started to try and contact people, which didn't work out too well. Staying in bed worked perfectly fine actually, but contacting people was harder, the only one I managed to get a reply from was Joyce, and she couldn't find anything to tell me.
The main shake was actually pretty big, they say it was 7.8 in the epicenter and around 5 here in Chengdu, and on the 20Th floors I could feel it quite heavily, the only lasting effect I saw in my apartment though was my cutting board that fell over from it's standing leaning position over the sink and into the sink instead, that took about 2 seconds to correct, so basically no, I didn't feel scared: if my shelves with classes could hold up I figure the concrete building must manage as well.
I have no prior experience with earthquakes so I have nothing at all to compare to, the time it lasted seemed pretty long, like a few minuets, but the power of it didn't feel so bad to me, compared to what I've seen in movies and stuff at least, haha. I stayed in my apartment for a few hours after the main shock and there was an almost constant vibration in the building, I though it was just the building keeping shaking out of pure resonance or something but it turns out there have been as many as 44 or even more small aftershocks.
At about 5.30pm a friend messaged me and told me there would be another big shock at 7pm so I figured it would actually be safer to leave before the chaos started again, I got a pretty good view of the traffic chaos from my window, so I gathered up some stuff, like my passport and laptop and other important things, and headed down the 21 stairs (since the main entrance was blocked for some reason and I had to go down to the parking spaces under the building to get out) and went out for lunch. I had still not found anyone who could speak English so I had my hopes on a Taiwanese guy that has a small restaurant near my place, but of course he was closed so I went to the next door restaurant instead.
Then I went out to where I am right now, outside a closed Starbucks where I have both power and a wireless connection to play with (the biggest reason I went out at all was actually that my Internet at home was disconnected when I got back from Shanghai, probably because I haven't paid for it in a few months). Here I finally met some people speaking English and I managed to get my Internet running and got the information I felt I needed, so right now I'm pretty satisfied.
The quake itself had it's center around 90km northwest of Chengdu and about 10km underground, it reached a maximum of 7.8 and about 5 here in Chengdu at 2.28pm local time. The official death toll right now is 107 people and more than 37 more are injured, the first numbers we saw was 4 and 5 dead students (I think primary school or middle school students) somewhere, there are also new about some 900 students are buried under their school buildings but it doesn't say much more. From BBCnews.com
I did not experience any problem with power and water, out of the ordinary that is, my building loses power once in a while and when it did today it was nothing that couldn't happen any day, except perhaps that the whole building was out of power and not just my apartment, which is partly why I decided to stay in my room since I actually get light from the windows there. It might be that I actually live in a pretty good building, considering I had power all throughout the quake and when I lost it I actually got it back in about an hour or two.
I have actually been a lot more afraid than this, and probably with good cause, just experiencing the normal every day traffic here, I've had more than a few near death experiences so far. Saying this probably doesn't sooth the mind of a scared mother but what I'm trying to say that this is not really anything to worry about.
I did actually bother to go outside my door too but didn't bother to go any further, I was tired and from what I had seen on the street I figured that it would just be safer to stay, so I went back to bed and started to try and contact people, which didn't work out too well. Staying in bed worked perfectly fine actually, but contacting people was harder, the only one I managed to get a reply from was Joyce, and she couldn't find anything to tell me.
The main shake was actually pretty big, they say it was 7.8 in the epicenter and around 5 here in Chengdu, and on the 20Th floors I could feel it quite heavily, the only lasting effect I saw in my apartment though was my cutting board that fell over from it's standing leaning position over the sink and into the sink instead, that took about 2 seconds to correct, so basically no, I didn't feel scared: if my shelves with classes could hold up I figure the concrete building must manage as well.
I have no prior experience with earthquakes so I have nothing at all to compare to, the time it lasted seemed pretty long, like a few minuets, but the power of it didn't feel so bad to me, compared to what I've seen in movies and stuff at least, haha. I stayed in my apartment for a few hours after the main shock and there was an almost constant vibration in the building, I though it was just the building keeping shaking out of pure resonance or something but it turns out there have been as many as 44 or even more small aftershocks.
At about 5.30pm a friend messaged me and told me there would be another big shock at 7pm so I figured it would actually be safer to leave before the chaos started again, I got a pretty good view of the traffic chaos from my window, so I gathered up some stuff, like my passport and laptop and other important things, and headed down the 21 stairs (since the main entrance was blocked for some reason and I had to go down to the parking spaces under the building to get out) and went out for lunch. I had still not found anyone who could speak English so I had my hopes on a Taiwanese guy that has a small restaurant near my place, but of course he was closed so I went to the next door restaurant instead.Then I went out to where I am right now, outside a closed Starbucks where I have both power and a wireless connection to play with (the biggest reason I went out at all was actually that my Internet at home was disconnected when I got back from Shanghai, probably because I haven't paid for it in a few months). Here I finally met some people speaking English and I managed to get my Internet running and got the information I felt I needed, so right now I'm pretty satisfied.
The quake itself had it's center around 90km northwest of Chengdu and about 10km underground, it reached a maximum of 7.8 and about 5 here in Chengdu at 2.28pm local time. The official death toll right now is 107 people and more than 37 more are injured, the first numbers we saw was 4 and 5 dead students (I think primary school or middle school students) somewhere, there are also new about some 900 students are buried under their school buildings but it doesn't say much more. From BBCnews.com
I did not experience any problem with power and water, out of the ordinary that is, my building loses power once in a while and when it did today it was nothing that couldn't happen any day, except perhaps that the whole building was out of power and not just my apartment, which is partly why I decided to stay in my room since I actually get light from the windows there. It might be that I actually live in a pretty good building, considering I had power all throughout the quake and when I lost it I actually got it back in about an hour or two.
I have actually been a lot more afraid than this, and probably with good cause, just experiencing the normal every day traffic here, I've had more than a few near death experiences so far. Saying this probably doesn't sooth the mind of a scared mother but what I'm trying to say that this is not really anything to worry about.
Friday, May 9, 2008
A very weird night in Shanghai
I met some friendly people at the hostel right away and sat down to drink with them and at about 2am a few of us decided to head out to a club, I have heard good things about Shanghai clubbing scene so I really wanted to check it out for myself. We went to a club called bonbon where we would get entry and free drinks for 88kuai each, the club was really skanky (I think this word actually doesn't exist in English but it sounds very right), hard to explain in a good way actually but try to visualize: first the guard was definitely the largest man I've ever seen, he was easily 2.20m tall and proportionally big, he seemed a bit retarded too, a quite scary first impression. In the club itself there were loads of cheap looking Chinese girls, a few overly intoxicated western girls and loads of overly intoxicated western guys, and some Chinese guys too of course. They played hip hop music and had it's own MC for the night and the whole scene was very American, at least to me. In Chengdu we have a lot of western bar, western style places with western music and western people, this was probably the next step; a western club.
We got there pretty late though and the place started thinning out and pretty soon my friends were the only people on the dance floor. I got bored of it and started checking out other groups of people and sat down with one such, I talked a little to a few people and suddenly a girl, I think she was American at least not Chinese, asked me very rudely who I knew there, when I replied no one she just said "then go away". I was totally stunned by it, never before have I encountered anything like it, especially not in China, so I said sorry and left, now I'm totally disappointed at myself for not coming up with some better and wittier reply but I was a unsober and chocked.
A Portuguese guy we met there took us to another place when we left bonbon, I think it was just called Dragon. And that place was really shady. When we got there we were the only customers, but there were quite a lot of pretty girls there, one of our group, a Philippino guy claimed the girls were also Philippino but we never got that confirmed. The Portuguese guy started out buying as all drinks and he really spent a lot of money on us, I bought a beer by myself later and it was 50kuai, he must have spent over 300yuan to keep us there so I started to suspect that he might actually be working there, I'm not sure he heard me when I asked but he said yes.
A lot more foreigners turned up and just about all of them were just really really rude, not a single Chinese person got there except the people working there and when the Portuguese guy started making weird suggestions to my friends, like if they wanted to sleep with him, we left, he was very gay.
Back at the hostel one of the guys showed us his toy he had bought in Hong Kong, a teaser disguised as a torch, we played with it for a while, not stunning anyone but seriously considering testing it, at least after reading up on it a little, but the night caretaker overheard us and confiscated it, which resulted in a huge conflict which I felt responsible for since I had actually held it and showed it to the caretaker when he came up to check on us. We kept arguing with him for quite a while but it was really hard to get some understanding between them since the caretaker didn't speak any English and the other guy didn't understand Chinese culture, I finally manged to convince him that he would leave it at the front desk until today so I could argue with the English speaking staff instead. All went well finally and he will get it back when he leaves on Monday.
Damn weird day!
We got there pretty late though and the place started thinning out and pretty soon my friends were the only people on the dance floor. I got bored of it and started checking out other groups of people and sat down with one such, I talked a little to a few people and suddenly a girl, I think she was American at least not Chinese, asked me very rudely who I knew there, when I replied no one she just said "then go away". I was totally stunned by it, never before have I encountered anything like it, especially not in China, so I said sorry and left, now I'm totally disappointed at myself for not coming up with some better and wittier reply but I was a unsober and chocked.
A Portuguese guy we met there took us to another place when we left bonbon, I think it was just called Dragon. And that place was really shady. When we got there we were the only customers, but there were quite a lot of pretty girls there, one of our group, a Philippino guy claimed the girls were also Philippino but we never got that confirmed. The Portuguese guy started out buying as all drinks and he really spent a lot of money on us, I bought a beer by myself later and it was 50kuai, he must have spent over 300yuan to keep us there so I started to suspect that he might actually be working there, I'm not sure he heard me when I asked but he said yes.
A lot more foreigners turned up and just about all of them were just really really rude, not a single Chinese person got there except the people working there and when the Portuguese guy started making weird suggestions to my friends, like if they wanted to sleep with him, we left, he was very gay.
Back at the hostel one of the guys showed us his toy he had bought in Hong Kong, a teaser disguised as a torch, we played with it for a while, not stunning anyone but seriously considering testing it, at least after reading up on it a little, but the night caretaker overheard us and confiscated it, which resulted in a huge conflict which I felt responsible for since I had actually held it and showed it to the caretaker when he came up to check on us. We kept arguing with him for quite a while but it was really hard to get some understanding between them since the caretaker didn't speak any English and the other guy didn't understand Chinese culture, I finally manged to convince him that he would leave it at the front desk until today so I could argue with the English speaking staff instead. All went well finally and he will get it back when he leaves on Monday.
Damn weird day!
Visa issues resolved
I did get the visa I wanted, double entry and expires on July 7Th, two days after I leave. After I got my visa I started my journey towards Shenzhen and thereafter Shanghai, I did a brief stop at Festivalwalk, a big shopping mall near the train station, to check out H&M and buy a pair of pants, which turned out to be a great idea because the weather in Shanghai is really bad and I only had shorts with me.
The mountains between Kowloon and the New Territories
taken from Kowloon Tong train station.
I was supposed to meet an online friend when I got to Shenzhen and since I only had around an hour before I had to take the airport bus she should have met me at the border, but of course her English is not the best and she had for some reason insisted that I should call her before she headed out, which resulted in the following things.
I had my second lunch at the border while waiting for her and then headed out to meet her where the airport buses are, she insisted that she would be there soon all the time so I didn't take the first bus I could have taken to get to meet her, that was a really bad idea since it turned out that the buses only left once per hour, not like every 15Th or at least 30Th minute that I had thought. There was also some kind of huge demonstration, people running around with Chinese flags and the love China logo and stuff all around the place so the bus was delayed even more because of that. So of course I arrived at the airport about 15 minutes before departure and I basically ran through all the check-in and security checks, only to find out that the flight wasn't even boarding yet.
I actually wanted to take the maglev train in to Shanghai after we landed but of course as it was already 11.30pm the train had stopped running and so had all the subways too, so I had to take a bus instead and then a taxi, with some good fortune I got to the hostel safely though and everything was fine.
The mountains between Kowloon and the New Territoriestaken from Kowloon Tong train station.
I was supposed to meet an online friend when I got to Shenzhen and since I only had around an hour before I had to take the airport bus she should have met me at the border, but of course her English is not the best and she had for some reason insisted that I should call her before she headed out, which resulted in the following things.
I had my second lunch at the border while waiting for her and then headed out to meet her where the airport buses are, she insisted that she would be there soon all the time so I didn't take the first bus I could have taken to get to meet her, that was a really bad idea since it turned out that the buses only left once per hour, not like every 15Th or at least 30Th minute that I had thought. There was also some kind of huge demonstration, people running around with Chinese flags and the love China logo and stuff all around the place so the bus was delayed even more because of that. So of course I arrived at the airport about 15 minutes before departure and I basically ran through all the check-in and security checks, only to find out that the flight wasn't even boarding yet.
I actually wanted to take the maglev train in to Shanghai after we landed but of course as it was already 11.30pm the train had stopped running and so had all the subways too, so I had to take a bus instead and then a taxi, with some good fortune I got to the hostel safely though and everything was fine.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
A brief stay
So the second and last night in Hong Kong I was out with Joyce (again of course), Man and Janice. We had HK style hot pot first and then we went to see Joyce's office, it was really messy. Joyce stayed with me in my extra bed in the hostel and we had dim sum breakfast this morning, you can't really go to Hong Kong without having dim sum so I just had to do that. Now I've spent most of the mid-day/afternoon waiting for my passport to get back so I've basically just been walking around shopping for souvenirs for my friends in Chengdu, I hope they will like what I found for them, it's really stupid though.
On Tuesday night I was out for dinner with Joyce and Almen, Joyce's sister, we had Chinese, HK style, food, like sweet and sour meatballs and some other Hong Kong-ish dishes, and after that we walked around the avenue of the stars and took some photos, it was actually the first time Almen had ever been there, which was kind of weird.Now if I do get the visa I'm expecting, there really is no other option than getting it actually since I have flight tickets and hostel reservations and stuff, I will meet an online friend in Shenzhen before I fly out to Shanghai, in about 10 minutes I should go out to the visa office again to see if they have it for me.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Chinese visa
Now here comes a shitload of trouble which is my own fault for my stupid choices about three months ago. When I was in Hong Kong last time I decided against getting a 6 months F (Business) visa to save some money and trouble, so instead I got a 3 months tourist visa with a certainty that I could without too much cost and trouble just extend it where I was. This I found out quite soon was not possible anymore though, people started telling me about a month and a half ago that a visa issued in Hong Kong can only be extended in Hong Kong, 'OK', I though, 'I'll just plan for another visit to Hong Kong and get the visa there, my schedule would allow for it at least and with my currently larger income it would just be a nice trip.
So I started planning and bought tickets, I decided to go and visit Sharon and Tracy in Shanghai too while I were at it and everything was fine, until perhaps two weeks ago when I started hearing about the new visa rules in China, so this is how it works now:
1. There is no such thing as a 6 months business visa anymore
2. There is no such thing as a 3 months tourist visa anymore
3. To get any visa you must have a departing ticket
4. To get any visa you must have a hotel reservation the night before your departure
5. The price has gone up from about 300 HKD to 1000HKD
6. Number two is actually not true because there is a 3 months double entry tourist visa, except that each stay can never be more than 30 days.
7. Urgent service is now 2 working days instead of an hour.
So when I started hearing these rumors I started researching a little about it, but the Internet is not really updated except to confirm that the rules are not the same anymore, not saying anything about the new rules themselves so I asked Janice in Hong Kong to call the office and inquire about it, after about 20 or so calls (I think) we finally got some information, which actually turned out to be insufficient but at least I had some heads up of what was coming.
Well I had to go to Hong Kong anyway, my tickets were bought and my visa expiring so early this morning I crawled up, since I couldn't sleep last night, at about 6.30 and managed to get myself to the bus. The bus seemed to run slower than it should and I arrived at the airport about 30 minutes before departure and found my flight already boarding. Two guys grabbed me and Checked me in, without checking in my luggage of course, and dragged me to the security demanding 200 yuan, which I paid them in the confusing, I doubt they would have given me back my passport and ticket if I hadn't but that is probably just an excuse for letting me get cheated. The security staff refused to let me pass of course since I had a bottle of pear/Cognac in my bag, a long overdue gift for Sharon, but I actually managed to convince them to let me pass and a girl ran with me to the gate and did a late checking of my bag there.
Extremely tired I arrived in Hong Kong, after an hour on the bus, two hours on a plane, another hour on another bus, half an hour on the Metro in Shenzhen, about a half hour more through the border checks. half hour yet again on the train in Hong Kong and some 20 minutes or so on the metro in Hong Kong, and found my hostel without any problem at all.
I actually found the Chinese visa office without any problem at all too, just 5 minutes walk from my hostel, but then the problems started; I hadn't heard anything about the hotel reservation rules before so they refused to even let me apply without that, I had to spend some time reserving a hostel in Shenzhen the night before my flight to Singapore on July 5th, at 11.35pm so I'm not very likely to actually stay in the hostel, for a booking fee of 1.05 euro.
Then back to the visa office again where a girl who was much nicer than the old man helped me out instead, this time I had all the papers but I still ran in to some problems, it was now too late to get the passport back the day after, which I had been told would be possible, so instead I will get it back on Thursday at around 3pm, this is a problem because I had planned to meet up with a friend in Shenzhen during the day before I fly to Shanghai in the evening, fortunately it is at least early enough for me to still catch my flight. And to that I'm not even sure if I can get the double entry visa, I can only hope.
So I started planning and bought tickets, I decided to go and visit Sharon and Tracy in Shanghai too while I were at it and everything was fine, until perhaps two weeks ago when I started hearing about the new visa rules in China, so this is how it works now:
1. There is no such thing as a 6 months business visa anymore
2. There is no such thing as a 3 months tourist visa anymore
3. To get any visa you must have a departing ticket
4. To get any visa you must have a hotel reservation the night before your departure
5. The price has gone up from about 300 HKD to 1000HKD
6. Number two is actually not true because there is a 3 months double entry tourist visa, except that each stay can never be more than 30 days.
7. Urgent service is now 2 working days instead of an hour.
So when I started hearing these rumors I started researching a little about it, but the Internet is not really updated except to confirm that the rules are not the same anymore, not saying anything about the new rules themselves so I asked Janice in Hong Kong to call the office and inquire about it, after about 20 or so calls (I think) we finally got some information, which actually turned out to be insufficient but at least I had some heads up of what was coming.
Well I had to go to Hong Kong anyway, my tickets were bought and my visa expiring so early this morning I crawled up, since I couldn't sleep last night, at about 6.30 and managed to get myself to the bus. The bus seemed to run slower than it should and I arrived at the airport about 30 minutes before departure and found my flight already boarding. Two guys grabbed me and Checked me in, without checking in my luggage of course, and dragged me to the security demanding 200 yuan, which I paid them in the confusing, I doubt they would have given me back my passport and ticket if I hadn't but that is probably just an excuse for letting me get cheated. The security staff refused to let me pass of course since I had a bottle of pear/Cognac in my bag, a long overdue gift for Sharon, but I actually managed to convince them to let me pass and a girl ran with me to the gate and did a late checking of my bag there.
Extremely tired I arrived in Hong Kong, after an hour on the bus, two hours on a plane, another hour on another bus, half an hour on the Metro in Shenzhen, about a half hour more through the border checks. half hour yet again on the train in Hong Kong and some 20 minutes or so on the metro in Hong Kong, and found my hostel without any problem at all.
I actually found the Chinese visa office without any problem at all too, just 5 minutes walk from my hostel, but then the problems started; I hadn't heard anything about the hotel reservation rules before so they refused to even let me apply without that, I had to spend some time reserving a hostel in Shenzhen the night before my flight to Singapore on July 5th, at 11.35pm so I'm not very likely to actually stay in the hostel, for a booking fee of 1.05 euro.
Then back to the visa office again where a girl who was much nicer than the old man helped me out instead, this time I had all the papers but I still ran in to some problems, it was now too late to get the passport back the day after, which I had been told would be possible, so instead I will get it back on Thursday at around 3pm, this is a problem because I had planned to meet up with a friend in Shenzhen during the day before I fly to Shanghai in the evening, fortunately it is at least early enough for me to still catch my flight. And to that I'm not even sure if I can get the double entry visa, I can only hope.
May holiday
While everybody back home were drinking in the park for one day I got 4 days holiday here. I was planning to go to some ancient town with Jane but when we arrived at the bus station on Thursday noon we found it so crowded it was nearly impossible to get anywhere and we soon found out that all the buses to that place had left already, instead we went to the Museum of Science and Technology in Chengdu which turned out to be pretty crappy, just about everything interactive there was broken and the other display items were rather boring, but we had still a pretty nice time there, watched a short 4D movie and everybody except me was screaming of fear when the so very animated shark bit and the rats ran over our feet, I guess these things doesn't get to me.
It turned out that Jane would have been too tired to go out anyway, we were supposed to meet up with Aaron to watch The Ironman but she basically fell asleep when we were waiting so she didn't go with me, we had seen the forbidden kingdom the night before anyway, which had turned out to be quite bad. The movie was pretty cool actually and after Aaron and I went out on my first outdoor bar trip this year, which was pretty good. I spent my Friday resting and working out, and I got convinced by Jiao to visit her hometown in the weekend, she actually tried to have me go there on Friday night but I managed to get out of that at least.
I'm not regretting i went though, the trip there was horrible, she had told me about 3 hours but she really has no sense of time at all, it took 5 hours and I was cramped up in the middle of a rather small car with 4 other not so small guys that were smoking all the time, so when I finally arrived I smelled really bad. The goal of the trip was not her hometown (YiBin) though, instead we went to Zhuhai.
Now you might be thinking that I went to south China again where Zhuhai is close to Hong Kong but this is another Zhuhai. Hai means ocean or sea, Zhu in the case of the Hong Kong one means pearl, so the place is pearl sea, the Zhu in the case of south Sichuan is bamboo, so it's a bamboo sea, it is actually a mountain with lots of bamboos on it, so really has nothing to do with a sea.
Zhuhai was another 2 hours from YiBin and once we got there it was already getting rather late, we did a short walk though but found a snake eating a mouse, it turned out it was actually a rather dangerous snake so some Chinese people who lived just there killed it. Out plan was basically just to sleep there and get up early enough to get around the mountain before we had to start getting ourselves back the day after, it was quite cool, a lot of bamboo and cool scenery, so I took about 150 photos, it was rather foggy though so it was hard to get really good photos.
It turned out that Jane would have been too tired to go out anyway, we were supposed to meet up with Aaron to watch The Ironman but she basically fell asleep when we were waiting so she didn't go with me, we had seen the forbidden kingdom the night before anyway, which had turned out to be quite bad. The movie was pretty cool actually and after Aaron and I went out on my first outdoor bar trip this year, which was pretty good. I spent my Friday resting and working out, and I got convinced by Jiao to visit her hometown in the weekend, she actually tried to have me go there on Friday night but I managed to get out of that at least.
I'm not regretting i went though, the trip there was horrible, she had told me about 3 hours but she really has no sense of time at all, it took 5 hours and I was cramped up in the middle of a rather small car with 4 other not so small guys that were smoking all the time, so when I finally arrived I smelled really bad. The goal of the trip was not her hometown (YiBin) though, instead we went to Zhuhai.
Now you might be thinking that I went to south China again where Zhuhai is close to Hong Kong but this is another Zhuhai. Hai means ocean or sea, Zhu in the case of the Hong Kong one means pearl, so the place is pearl sea, the Zhu in the case of south Sichuan is bamboo, so it's a bamboo sea, it is actually a mountain with lots of bamboos on it, so really has nothing to do with a sea.
Zhuhai was another 2 hours from YiBin and once we got there it was already getting rather late, we did a short walk though but found a snake eating a mouse, it turned out it was actually a rather dangerous snake so some Chinese people who lived just there killed it. Out plan was basically just to sleep there and get up early enough to get around the mountain before we had to start getting ourselves back the day after, it was quite cool, a lot of bamboo and cool scenery, so I took about 150 photos, it was rather foggy though so it was hard to get really good photos.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)