In the last lecture of China hotel & tourism by Dr. Han Shen from Shanghai

So much has happened in the past month, sorry I havent really been updating the blog in a while.. Weve had pikkujoulut at the student halls, the Independence day reception at the Finnish consulate to celebrate Finland's 90th birthday, final exams (and of course very serious studying for them...), farewell parties, my parents visiting me for a week and and and.... Weve also tried to make more plans regarding our upcoming trip but everythings still a bit open, never mind though. The posse about hit the road includes me, Niina, Marianne, Tytti, Juha and Sami will probably join us a bit later on. In the first few days/weeks Niinas brother Arto and his friend Jari and my friend Hanna will be travellin with us as well so weve got a proper group together :)

See!! I did really study while I was here.. made notes and everything! So proud of myself.. ;)

We had our farewell party at a club called Paparazzi. It was really nice to get together with pretty much all of the exchange students for one last time, sniff!

The official farewell party at the campus. We got some certificates for the exchange and also snacks and gifts that were excahnged among ourselves anonomously. Just like in 3rd grade, yay!

Me getting my present, was almost the last one so no good presents left... :( I got a little totem pole from Disney that looks used and dirty :D Thanks!

Sami, me, Niina and Juha.

Independence day reception 6.12.

Mum and dad at the airport.. and below photos of stuff that we did and saw...

Buying silk at Western market and the end of Slava's Snowshow at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts (fantastic show, if you have the chance to see it, GO!! And sit in the first section somewhere in the middle!)

Busy workers and chicken feet at a supermarket in Shenzhen in mainland China.

Yep, those are snake skins...

Final exams are over!! Happy and tired in Shenzhen.

Dried foods in Central Hong Kong.

The Peak and my new best friend :D

Pikkujoulut :)

Not everyone could fit in the room so some people stood in the hallway.

Can you find the tontut???

And The Plan after Hong Kong is..... Were flying out on 22nd december to Bangkok -> Koh Chang for xmas and hopefully new years as well -> Cambodia for Mariannes cousins wedding  -> Laos -> Vietnam -> back to Laos -> north of Thailand (at least Chiang Mai) -> Malaysia and Singapore -> the Philippines -> Shanghai (maybe touring China a bit) -> Beijing and the Great Wall -> Trans Siberian train to Mongolia -> Through Russia with a few stops -> Back to Finland OR a visit to Germany to say hello to Marianne.. Thats the plan anyway, will see how well we stick to it but were just gonna see how it goes in each place and take it from there :) Oh yeah, the whole trip should take us about 3 months so I should be back by the beginning of april...

Anyhow, if anyone made it this far, hope you enjoyed the stories and photos during the exchange! :) I will try to write some updates while were on the road but doubt that Ill be putting up any photos or anythin.. So write emails and text messages every now and then, really wanna hear from you!!

Merry Xmas everyone!! :)

People are waiting in the lobby before the dinner.

The drinks were all some kind of juice or soda mixers. Could have done with some real punch...

We had a 4 course meal which included Norwegian salmon as a starter, seafood minestrone soup, then you could choose from 3 main courses. I had the beef and pumpkin lasagna and then for dessert we had tiramisu and tea or coffee. They actually served red wine as well but the glass was so tiny that you couldnt really get anything in there! Most of the Chinese people didnt even drink their wines.. The exchange table asked for 3 more bottles :D The dinner itself was really nice and I really enjoyed it! Some of the Chinese students seemed to have quite a lot of difficulties with using a knife and a fork though... It was so funny, there was one guy who just had no idea what he was doing, he kind of managed to cut his food with both utensils but then he ate everyhting with his knife and pushed his food on it with the fork. I understand that it can be very challenging, I mean it hasnt exactly always been easy with the chopsticks either... :)

The dining area with the nice decorations on the roof.

The salmon starter

During the evening there were many performances as well. The whole night was hosted by 2 girls and 2 boys who spoke in turns in Cantonese and English. So you could actually follow the flow of the event. Sometimes the things they say are just so funny like when people were coming to the dining room they were saying "Can everyone please take your seat and be quiet!" So polite, ah :D In the beginning they had some music performances and short speeches which were followed by the meal and some more speeches... Unfortunately mostly in Cantonese... The guest of honour was some famous film director/media person from Hong Kong who was talking for like 30minutes (all in Cantonese) which was a shame as it would have been nice to listen to what he was saying. Instead I made animals out of my napkin...

Some of the exchange students from Lisheng. Looking very sharp in the suits boys!

The hosts

These guys sang really well! Especially the guy, apparently he won the Hall Singing contest a few weeks ago. Go Lisheng woo!!

The hosts interviewing the guest of honour after his speech, still in Cantonese... so more napkin animals..

In the end it was time for a group photo with the organizers and guests.

And some other guests (mostly exchange students from Finland, Germany, Korea and USA)

And of course the most important guests of all, Niina and Sofia!

When the evening ended the hosts said that there will be a dance in the next room, so we went to have a look:

Quite an afterparty eh? ;)

So we just went to bed after watching the Chinese people trying to dance... oh it was so funny! They really had no idea what they were doing, taking huge leaps from one place to another and being completely out of rhythm. At least they tried :)

Everyone signed this big poster and I think its gonna be hung on the wall of the common area tomorrow. As a gift everyone also got a decorated coloring pen that had a crown on the end of it and a little decorated wooden holder for it. A nice little something to remember this nice evening.

Henrik wanted to show us his blue & yellow underwear...

The boys put on quite a show!! Or should I say girls... ;)

Followed by a bit of Abba obviously!

They had a competition called "The breakfast of a champion" because apparently everyones a champion in Sweden :D It included some herring on crisp bread, sausage with a shot of vodka and chewing tobacco... They also had a buffet for everyone where they served meatballs with lingonberry jam, potatoes and gravy, crisp bread, gingerbread, glögi etc etc. I was very happy about that cos Ive started to crave Finnish food lately..

What can I say... Enjoy!! ;)

The first views of the campus when you enter the area.

The clocktower is a popular meeting point in the middle of the campus. One of teachers insists on calling it the "cocktower" (well its mostly the accent really...)but hey, what ever floats your boat.. :D The tourism department is located on the right, most of our classes are held in the building that has the posters on it.

You see these guys practising in the campus area all the time. Ive been quite surprised about the number of girls in the groups. Its almost 50-50, wouldnt be quite like that in Finland...

Graduation day!! Different departements have graduations at different dates now, I think its tourism this wednesday or thursday. The outfit also includes a wonderful hat, yay! And whats even better, almost all of the graduates get presents (from their families and friends) like huge furry animals... Me and Niina have spotted Winnie the Pooh, Hello Kitty (obviously!), Minnie Mouse and god knows what else...

So moving on to our home sweet home, the student halls!

Home to me, Niina and about 3000 other students. A bit different than KOAS... ;)

The main entrance on the street level. Also known as the place to be on a wednesday, thursday, friday or saturday evening if you want to go out and havent found anyone to go with... :D At least a few (usually about 3-5 taxi loads) people are guaranteed to be there...

Before you get in or out you have to beep your student ID card on one of these machines. Big brothers always watching.

Thats our door at the end of the corridor....

.....welcome to room 660! :)

This has also become one of our favourite activities ever since Milka (in the middle) bought seasons 1-7 from Sex and the City.. usually without the beer though...

And last but certainly not least, the neighbourhood and where we shop for food! :P There are two superstores on our block, several restaurants and just too many bakeries!

A small street between blocks with one of our favourite restaurants.. You get a soup, a main meal (massive portions!) and tea for about $38.

The legendary 7-11... an alcoholics dream come true! ;)

Wellcome...                                       ... and Park n Shop

And this is what they sell in them... Thats right, those massive bags are rice and these bottles are soy sauce... Just a few choices huh...

One of the dozens of bakeries... One of those pieces of cake costs around $6 (0,6€)!! Good luck walking past them every day..!

And just to make sure that youll die from watching photos, I just have to put in a few more from Halloween! :) We had big plans to go to Lan Kwai Fong but oh what happened.... We got there quite early but could not get anywhere as EVERYONE else in Hong Kong had the same plan! The police had blocked half of the roads and had a detour to get to the bars! Redicilous! So after walking for an hour without really getting anywhere we decided to go to Wan Chai and actually had a really good time there :)

Getting ready to go.. Milka, Jukka, Niina, Sami, Juho and Juha. The Finnish posse ;)

Lan Kwai Fong on Halloween... stay if you dare! That sight was enough horror for that night..!

Four-eyes and two devils in a bar in Wan Chai... original, I know but it was all that we could find right before we left on a tiny budget...

We met a Canadian film crew who were travelling around the world making a travel documentary (or something in that direction..)! I got to be the camerawoman for a while (not a very good idea to give me anything that costs more than 10€ at 2am on a night out but lucky them, I was an angel ;) ). Watch out TV, here I come!!

A small part of the other side of the park... it was divided into two parts on both sides of the hills.

The view from the top of the ferris wheel. Pretty impressive, huh?

To get to other side of the park you had to take a bus or the cable car, so of course we chose the cable car!! But as you can see I wasnt scared at all! :) Even though it didnt help to know that on Lantau island on a similar cable car track one of the cars (I guess theyre called cars then..) fell down just around the time we arrived to Hong Kong in august... The ride took about 10 minutes and it was really nice because the views really were amazing!!

On the other side of the park we went on a big hot air balloon that is connected to the ground by a cable. It doesnt go that high up, but high enough to get great views again.

China gave Hong Kong two pandas as a gift for its 10th anniversary back with China earlier this year. Theyre called Le Le and Ying Ying :) Why they live in Ocean Park, I dont know.. Its quite sad cos Im sure they could have placed them somewhere where they have more space.. Anyway besides us there were so many people wanting to take photos of them.. and they were behaving like idiots! Chinese people really arent afraid of using their elbows when they want to go forward in a crowd...! Its lucky that we got out of there alive...

We stayed in the park pretty much all afternoon just going from one ride to another with all the other 7-year-olds... In the evening we headed to Jumbo Kingdom, one of the biggest floating restaurants in the world. Another of those must-go-places in Hong Kong... Its located right next to Ocean Park so we had a nice evening walk there. It was really relaxing, all quiet, you could just hear the small waves hitting the shore. The last time Ive been in a place that was that quiet must have been in Finland. Nice.

It was a really fancy place, they actually have a 6 star restaurant. Maybe not as cheap as our local restaurant where we buy noodle soup for $15 (1,5€) :D It would have probably been really good but it just didnt feel quite right to go in with our shorts when everyone else was wearing suits and evening gowns......

Lamma island

The next day we thought that we should hit the beach as there probably arent that many hot days left. The weather has got colder in the past few weeks, its started to rain more and its not as sunny as it used to be. Were actually thinking about buying jackets cos in the evenings it does get quite chilly already with the wind. Its only like 23C in the evenings anymore... Just like in Finland, eh?? ;) But that day at Lamma was nice and hot so it was good.

We took the ferry from HK island to Lamma, took about 30minutes and cost around $12/one way. Lamma really surprised us, even though we didnt really know what to expect. It was sooooo different than the rest of HK, like Peter Pan's Neverland or something! Seriously, the atmosphere there was so relaxed, the whole island was green, it looked like a jungle! There were quite a few of western people there as well, apparently its really popular with the expats here so I guess some of them live there and some have holiday homes or something. Everybody seemed to know each other.. Such a hippie place, me likey! :) Definitely wanna go back there again just to relax and get away from the stress of the city!

The yellow sign says "Warning! Keep away from the shark prevention net! Please swin within the boom line area!" You dont have to tell me twice!!!! Ill be damn sure to swim within the boom line area!!!

Lamma is famous for its seafood. You can choose your own fish or crab or whatever you wanna eat. Poor little fishies.

One happy hippie :)

Jos tässä kaupungissa ei hermot meikäläisilläkään mene julkiseen liikenteeseen (metrolla pysty matkustamaan kivuttomasti - kaikkien muitten 12 miljoonan paikallisen kanssa) niin ne menee katukauppiaisiin. Yritäpä kävellä 5 metriä kauemmas keskustan Nanjing Roadilla ilman että kukaan tulee pysäyttämään sua ja oot virtuoosi! "Missy missy, you want copy bag, copy watch, DVD...??" kuuluu joka ikisestä suunnasta kauniina stereona... Ja arvatkaapa vaan kuinka hyvin kiinalainen katukauppias tuntee sanonnan Ei kiitos?! Ai ihanaa, niin erinomaisesti! Sanonpa vaan, että on ihme ettei meistä kumpaakaan oo viety Robocop-ääniä pitävällä poliisiautolla vähän rauhottumaan asemalle... :D

Pari tyyppiä Nanjing Roadilla.

Robocop - ja kadut ovat jälleen turvalliset kansan käyskenneltäviksi!

Penninvenyttäjinä päätettiin taas matkustaa junalla, lopputuloksena oli aikaa kierrellä Shanghaita ruhtinaalliset 2 päivää (junamatka tällä kertaa 20h/suunta ja kokonaisuudessaan hard sleepereillä n.$800). Yllättävän paljon saatiin kyllä aikaseksi, ja tällä kertaa oltiin jopa tehty päiväkohtasia suunnitelmia kartan (!!) ja Lonely Planetin oppaan (!!) avulla. Mikä mahtavinta, ostettiin myös paluu-liput etukäteen... Voi tätä suunnitelmallisuuden määrää! Käytiin siis reissun aikana piipahtamassa the Bundilla, Nanjing Roadilla, Old Townissa, Huaihai Roadilla, People's Squarella, French Concessionilla, Jing'an temppelissä ja muuten vaan haahuilemassa eteen sattuneilla kujilla. Shanghai on tähän mennessä (Honkkarin jälkeen) rikkaimman näkönen ja eurooppalaisin kaupunki Kiinassa. Ei sinänsä mikään ihme sen historiaa ajatellen, siellä on nyt kuulemma myös niin paljon länsimaalaisia töissä että ne tuo vahvoja vaikutteita mukanaan koko ajan. Tyhmää vain, niinku kaikkialla, että ne on innostunut purkamaan paljon ikivanhoja rakennuksia pois uusien pilvenpiirtäjien ja ostoskeskusten alta..!

Nuudelia aamulla, päivällä ja illalla... Oli sentään hieno robottivoimanuudelikippo! Lapsille junaviihdettä ;)

Vanhoja pankkitaloja Bundin rannalla.

Minä ja Mao. Oli tosissaan iltasin niin kylmä ja kamala tuuli että pitkähihanen ei tahtonu riittää. Hostellin säätiedotusten mukaa lämpöö oli 14-23C...

Ehkä setä on menossa rakentamaan uutta tornia?

Ne tykkää kovasti pyöräillä....

... minkä takia onkin tärkeää, että rekkarit on kunnossa! Satulalla niin väliä... :D

Kovasti kalpeanaama sinisilmä taas herätti kiinnostusta paikallisten kesken. Tällä kertaa ei muistaakseni poseerattu kuvassa kenenkään kanssa, mutta "vaivihkaa" meistä räpsittiin kuvia siellä sun täällä. Turisteja tuolla oli niin paljon enemmän kuin esim. Pekingissä, ihan mieletöntä! Ei ees Honkkarissa näe noin paljoa länsimaalaisia vaikka ei me täälläkää mikään kovin harvinainen näky olla. Kaipa sekin nyt teki tehtävänsä, että formulat oli ollu Shanghaissa just edellisellä viikolla..

No entäs se baarielämä? Niinpä....? Molempina iltoina kierreltiin tällingeissä oppaat mukana etsimässä tanssikenkää vipattavia menomestoja, mutta aina kun päästiin annettuun osoitteeseen, meitä odotti vaan seinässä killuva Heineken-mainos ja tyhjä rakennus. Que!? Kierrettiin valehtelematta pari tuntia, ellei kauemminkin, ympäriinsä löytäen 1 ainoa paikka koko hemmetin kaupungista! Siinä vaiheessa voin sanoa, että alkoholisoitunutta ystäväänne harmitti toden teolla! Vielä enemmän harmitti kun lauantaina käytiin syömässä jälleen Lonely Planetin kehumassa meksikolaisraflassa (hittoon koko opas sanon minä!:D) ja bongattiin sen yhteydessä katu jossa nökötti baari toisensa jälkeen vaan odottamassa uutta iltaa ja populaa....... Voi onni.

Yritä nyt sitten nauttia ylihinnotellusta alialkoholisoidusta drinkistä kun taustalla soi B-tason musiikkia...

Paljon parempi vaihtoehto on siis halpa hostelliolut terassilla!

Old Town oli hieno, joskin sielläkin oli vähän vaikeuksia löytää sitä aitoa vanhaa kulttuuria kaikkien Starbucksien ja Dairy Queenien keskeltä... Samoin ihmisten keskeltä.. jos kuvittelet että Tukholmassa tai Tallinnassa vanhan kaupungin kapeet kujat on ahtaita kun on paljon ihmisiä, niin menepä tonne! Siellä ei monesti tartte ite päättää minne haluaa mennä kun massa vie mukanaan sinne minne sattuu milloinkin menemään.... :D

Jing'an temppelissä kaikki muutkin nakkas tonne kolikon ni minä tein saman perässä. Nakkasin tosin ohi.

Maistuisiko soijamuna?

Minä ja jellona Old Townissa.

Täällä oli suhteellisen väljää...

Kuitenkin, kivaa oli! Tavattiin junassa paluumatkalla kiva saksalainen tyttö, joka oli tullu Kiinaan Trans Siperialla Ulan Baatorin kautta! Vaihdeltiin vähän tietoja keskenään ja sovittiin että viedään se keskiviikkona Ladies' nightiin (siis ilmanen sisäänpääsy ja juomat naisille, jos en ole ennen maininnut...) Wan Chaihin kaikkien muitten vaihtareitten kanssa. Tällasta siis tällä kertaa, seuraava reissu taas jo suunnitteilla... ---> nokka kohti länttä ja Tiibetiä! Pitää hankkia viisumit ja ottaa selvää lennoista, sinne kun kestäis junalla vaivaset 52h/suunta... Harmittaa kyllä, kun sinne on just hiljattain rakennettu uus rata, joka on kuulemma aika komia. Mut kaipa sitä kerran voi lentsikkakonettaki käyttää. Voi pojat, voi pojat, en malta odottaa! Kunnes saan tietty vuoristotaudin ja pakkaspureman varpaisiin telttamajotuksessa Everestin juurella.... Mikäs sen parempaa! ;) Palaamisiin siis!

Kadonnutta glamouria Shanghain kujilla.

Mitä tähän voi enää lisätä?! Joka ikisestä korttelista löyty Häagen Dazs!! Siinä oikea syy muuttaa tähän kaupunkiin!

Of course we went on all the COOL rides as well... as you can see, we flew with Dumbo (you could actually control your own Dumbo and make it go up and down when you want!), rode on the carusell, sat in the tea cups and of course stepped into Minnies and Chips shues for a few minutes :D

As you can see from the smile on my face, I really had a great time!! :D

On saturday we started our day by going to the gym. Its here at the halls and we get to use it for free, great! After we went to do a bit of shopping in Sham Shui Po where you can buy clothes for $10-$50, and you can always bargain on everything so it is really, really cheap! The quality is not so good, surprisingly, but never mind. I found some cool stuff from this Indian shop, I could have bought the whole place! In the evening we went out to Lang Kwai Fong. You always bump into people from PolyU there, so even if youd go alone, youd still end up in a massive crowd of people :) This time it was mostly Finns in our group with a few people from Austria, Holland, France and Germany. We had a good time, again, buying cheap beer from 7-11 and just sitting outside. We actually met a pilot for Cathay Pacific, tried to get some free flights to Thailand from him but he said he only flies to one city in China, I think it was Shanghai.. useless ;D

Having a beer (or two...) in Lan Kwai Fong with Milka and Bernadette.

There must be something really interesting up there... :D Welcoming the morning with Gabor, Lauriane and Olli.

As you can guess we didnt really have a lot of energy on sunday to do anything so we just stayed in and slept. But on monday, the actual birthday, we were well rested again to continue celebrating. We didnt really do much tho, went to the gym in the morning again and then in the afternoon me, Niina, Milka and Juho went bowling. It was a lot of fun after a long time! And of course I won every single game because it was my birthday and I had special powers ;) Well almost anyway...

STRIKE!!!

Juho and Milka.

In the evening we ate cake and watched a movie in the common area of the halls. It was a very relaxing evening, just taking it easy. Milka also gave me a great gift; she was my personal hairdresser for the evening and palm rolled my dreads :)

I turned 5... :)

The Finnish team: Olli, Juha, Anssi, Milka, me, Sami, Lauri, Juho and Niina.

The buzz...

Many countries had prepared some entertainment on stage as well. The Germans had a beer drinking and sausage eating contest (really, no?!), the Malaysians had some sort of dancing competition with long bamboo sticks... It was great fun! It was really nice that most of the countries had prepared some dishes to try as well. The Japanese made sushi, the Swedes had meatballs, the Australians had some toast with Marmite (.......) etc. And a lot of the countries had drinks as well, like sake, Heineken, wine, Red bull... After a little while the Finnish booth instead of just serving shots of vodka, turned into a bar where we were making vodka Red bull mixers... :D And also giving them out with the principle "one for you, one for me......" :D

A happy volunteer about to take part in the German sausage eating competition :D

Joskus maistuu, toisinaan sitten taas ei... :D Introducing Finlandia and tervasnapsi.

We made the Finnish game mölkky out of Pringles cans, clever Finns, eh??

Some of the Dutch guys.

Austria

USA (or whats left of it..)

Italy (notice the Dolce&Gabbana boxers on the wall... :D)

At the end of the evening everyone went out again. I dont think that there was such a big group of us as the first time but we still managed to fill a bar. And as it was Ladies night (free entry and free drinks for women) we couldnt have been happier... Untill the next morníng anyway... ;).

Uhhmmm..... I have to go to window 34...?!

We really didnt expect the hard sleepers to be that good but they were actually quite comfortable and clean and the car was really spacious. The berth had 6 beds and mine and Niinas beds were the top ones. Since we had slept like 3 hours the night before we pretty much just climed up to the beds and went to sleep. The next day when you could actually see outside we were just looking at the scenery. It was amazing to see the countryside that well! It looked so poor and undeveloped in places, people just used their hands and some simple equipment in the fields. It was like going back in time. They farm a lot of corn here, especially in the central parts of China. People had spread massive piles of corn on the streets, their roofs, the fields....You just saw yellow patches everywhere! Its just a shame that I didnt get any good photos from the train.

Making my way up... and down.... :D

And so the story continues... So we got to Beijing, well rested and everything, and started to look for our hostel. We booked one right next to the train station (6,60€/night in a double room) so we thought that its gonna be no problem to find it. Well... we walked around for ages and theres no sight of the hostel.. We were asking everyone if they knew where it could be but after many discussions in english/chinese/finnish/sign language we found out absolutely nothing. Of course us being Niina and Sofia we didnt have a map so that didnt help... :D In the end it turned out that we were at the wrong train station so we took a taxi (sounds easier to do than it was as they spoke NO english and wouldnt take us) to the other station and hallelujah, the hostel was right at the other side of the road.

Not like this.... :D Tip 1. Take a map with you when you travel to Beijing (Chinese version)!

We were planning on going to the Great Wall the following day but as we woke up in the morning Niina was feeling really sick (we still dont know what happened.. she probably ate something funny) and could hardly move. So we decided it would be better to leave it for the next day and just have a look at the sights in Beijing. So me and my poor crippled friend once again with our little piece of paper went out to see Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, the Silk market, the Drum Tower and just wonder around the city. We wanted to take the subway but it was just impossible as there were no signs in english, one lousy map of a part of the subway and they sold tickets from a booth that had queues so long to it that we could have walked by the time we would have got tickets. It would have been cheap, like 3RMB (0,3€) but of course since were Niina and Sofia we lost our nerves and just stormed out of the station... :D Next we wanted to take the bus but we couldnt find the stops so we lost our nerves again. At that point we just thought, screw it, well just take a taxi. But.... again, no one would take us because they didnt speak english and we only had our little piece of paper with us so we couldnt exactly show them where we want to go either.. I can tell you, at that point we (the two people on earth who really have no patience at all!) were boiling up and saying to hell with Beijing! Its impossible to go anywhere :D But clever us, we went to our hostels reception and asked them to right down the names of the sights in chinese. Then it was ok, we got the taxis (still wasnt easy though) and got to the sights... after losing our nerves yet again in the mad, mad traffic jams! We really need some anger management courses or something... :D

In Tiananmen Sq we were like celebrities!!!! Everyone was looking at us and things got real crazy after one guy wanted to take a photo with us. After that no matter where you looked people were seriously queuing up to do the same. It was crazy, some people ran to us, some took many photos with different poses, some posed in turns in a group...... We couldnt move more than 5 metres without being stopped! So tip 2. Discuise yourself as a Chinese person in Tiananmen Sq and you might actually get to take some photos instead of just posing in them...

In the evening we met some other travellers from Holland, the US, Scotland, France etc. in the hostel bar... The guy with glasses in the brown T-shirt is actually from our school, we bumped into him in the bar!!! How small can the world be?!?!

Since we are Niina and Sofia we only bought single tickets to Beijing... so the next day we thought it would be a good idea to get tickets back for the day after. Again easier said than done......... we went to the train station and thought its gonna be a bit difficult with english and everything but OH MY GOD!!! People were acting like animals "queuing" for the tickets, hitting each other and pushing each other! The queues were long as hell, didnt move anywhere and again no one had no idea which window to go to for HK tickets. We asked people with our paper with some sentences in chinese and every single person pointed in a different direction... Well at least they tried, have to give them that. But if you dont know, why not just say so instead of pointing in some random direction?! Long story short, we completely lost it after 2 hours of queing and stormed out of the station without tickets :D We got them (incredibly lucky cos it was the national day 1.10 and EVERYONE is travelling then and the tickets only come to sale 10 days before.... great system.......) in the end from a tour booking desk at our hostel. But we could only get seats and as you know the journey takes 24 hours (now even longer cos we only got the tickets to Shenzhen across the border) so we werent too excited about that... We also werent happy that we had to leave a day earlier than we had planned so we didnt have time to see the Great Wall in the end :( Instead we just had a closer look at Beijing.

Even though everything didnt go the way we had planned it was certainly a very memorable trip!! ;) We still need to go back to see the Wall and hopefully visit Mao as well but for now this was it. Now were looking into taking the train to Shanghai next week, but this time we will buy a return ticket!! ;)

Yummy....?