Julia and Jens discover East Asia

those are supposed to be one of the most impressive rice terraces in China.. we were a bit unhappy as it rained a lot, but we were still able to grasp a bit of their beauty... they're just so huge! Around the farmer's village there live a lot of people of the minority folk of Yao people. Women starting from a distinct age will not cut their hair anymore and let it grow, they then bound their hair around their head. One of the lady that brought us up to the rice hills showed us their hair... it's actually not just one piece of long hair, but she had three big bunches of hairs each around one meter long... thoe must weight at least 5 kilograms, i duno how she manages to wear them all day long up and down this mountain.... a already struggled with those 500grams of mine ;o)

we stayed overnight at a very basic hotel in the village of dazhai... a bit of a tourist place, but quite empty at the time we came there ... we definetely realized it was not the right time to come there when we got wet from top to bottom after a never ending rain shower...

First of all it wasn't really easy to get out of Hong Kong to start our trip. Due to swine flue panic attacks we had to fill in several forms to make sure we're NOT coming from Mexico - one on Hong kong side, then the same one again on China side in Shenzhen border... that's central logistics organization, isn't it?!?!? Anyway, we made it to the other side, quite belayed, first time on Chinese ground, a bit lost, looking for a bus, didn't find the right one going to the airport, taking another metro, then a taxi that brought us to the airport.... two heart bumpig hours, i thought we would definetely miss our flight, arrived 30min before the official departure time, only to find out that our flight was delayed by 1 hour.... but who cares, we got our flight to guilin...

the first impression of guilin was amazing... still used to the bustling and noisy megacity of Hong kong, we found guilin airport surrounded by total darkness... we only saw the even darker lime stones shades in the background... loved it!

guilin and actually rather the smaller town of Yangshuo... as i heard from chinese people has always been said to be the most beautiful and scenic area in whole china, if not the whole world... that's what's been taught to chinese pupils in schools... I have to say, it' s not an understatement... We both really loved the mountain area... see those pictures for reference and i'm sure you agree!!!

We did some great cycling around Yangshuo, we caught a lot of sun and lost a lot of sweat on the way ;o)

We also visited some caves, took a mud bath, and bathed in some hot springs...

Boat trip to Sai Kung Islands


At the peak:




Bank of China:

Dried Seafood curiosities:

YES, my internship in Hong Kong is over. This is my last week living in Hong Kong!!!

Been a bit stressed with all that stupid packing and organizing, but nonethelesse, I am now all ready to leave Hong Kong!!

Tonight, my friend Jens from Osnabrueck, Germany is coming to Hong Kong. We studied together at University in Germany. On Monday our grand journée to East Asia will start!!!

Where will we go:

3 weeks: China --> Guilin, Xi'an, Shaolin Si, Datong, Beijing, Tianjin (May)
2 weeks: South Korea --> Incheon, Seoul, Busan (beginning of June)
2 weeks: Japan --> Fukuoko, Hiroshima, Kyto, Nagoya, Tokyo (end of June)

Those are just the places we think we gonna travel to, we both made a bit of research on the countries and realized how little we actually knew about those countries... What do YOU know about South Korea?!?! I hope I can tell you more about it in a couple of weeks. I will post pics here.

We have 7 weeks of travel ahead of us. The end of our trip will be Tokio, Japan. Jens will take his plane back to Germany there on the 29 of June. I wanna do a Mandarin Summer course in China and will take a flight or ferry back to China and start my course beginning/mid of July, either in Harbin or Dalian in Liaoning Province (very north of China).

Of course, I'm a bit sad to leave Hong Kong, especially to leave those friends I met here, our hiking trips, the mountains, the veeeery good food, my beloved area To Kwa Wan, where I lived, the old man I always meet at 8:40am in the stairways and my room mate Max who has been a great companion those 6 months. Will miss our conversations, laughs and dinner together...

Hong Kong is probably one of the easiest cities in Asia to live as a foreigner, no doubt. But still I got some difficulties really emersing myself into the city life, especially if you don't wanna hang out westerners only, but lack fluency in chinese language... I am happy to have met so many nice people through language exchange. I hope that with the experiences I made in Hong Kong, I can even have a better time in China... or maybe i will just miss Hong Kong like hell already after one week only in China. Let's find out how China is like.. start first smoothly by going to the tourist spots and then later live there for a while.

Anyway, here are some pictures of Hong Kong I made this week... feeling like a tourist again ;o)

Hope you gonna have a look on the pictures of our trip, share some travel experiences with us and keep us updated about what is going on at home and in the rest of the world!

Don't forget us, just because we're in remote China!!! ^_^