Qingdao: a livable, modern city

My venture into China began in the city of Qingdao. With it’s 3.5 million inhabitants, the city is nowhere to be found amongst the most populous Chinese cities. Often elected as one of the most livable cities in China, in fact, it was offering a very pleasant first step.

Not so pleasant was the first gulp though. Carrying my big backpack several blocks under the sun, finally I arrived to a pizzeria, a meeting point with my friend, Rudi. The waiter saw that I was a bit worn out, so he offered me a glass of water. The mental image of cold water refreshing by body was quickly overwritten by the taste of warm water that I was actually served. I got the first lesson: Chinese do not drink cold water, as they believe it is not good for health.

Luckily, there is some place for cold drinks in Qingdao. Because the city used to be a German colony (damn, I had to travel around the world to learn that Germany had a colony in Asia!), the country’s second biggest brewery, Tsingtao is located here. Drinking Tsingtao is very popular, they even hold a yearly beer festival. Funniest thing however, that a lot of places offer you beer by the weight. They hang a Tsingtao-branded plastic sack on the tap of the keg, along with a spring balance, and if you order 2kg of beer, they will fill it up until the balance reads 2kg. Then you walk away with a sack of beer and pour it into glasses at home.

Selina, Janice, Rudi, me and a sack of beer

The city was also the host of the sailing events of the 2008 Olympic Games. Today, the city is building a new metro network. By 2016 they plan to finish an underground network of 8 lines. (As a side note, in Budapest, we are trying to construct our 4th underground line for the past decade and the trains running are around 40 years old). Parts of the city feature modern skyscrapers, but village-like neighborhoods can also be found. Cars of unknown brands cruise up and down on the roads, but the taxis almost exclusively wear the well known VW brand.

Located not far from Qingdao, one can make a day trip to the mountains of Lao Shan.
The trip can be tricky, because the way to get there has changed quite a lot in recent years. As a general advice in China: do NOT rely on lonely planet or any other guide books too much! An edition dated only a few years back might contain already outdated information. That’s just how rapidly China changes!
Nevertheless once you get to Lao Shan, you can do a number of great hikes (the park is huge, do not underestimate distances!), buy some locally grown tea, or contemplate nature (some say Taoism was born here). The natural park also has state of the art fingerprint scanning entrance gates …just to make sure all nature lovers get registered by the state:)

Last but not least, Chinese mistranslations are always a good reason for a grin:)

Gyeongju (경주시)

Gyeongju, also known as Gyeongju-si or Kyongju, but not to be mistaken with Gwangju, Jeju or Cheongju (although they all sound the same) is a coastal city in the east of Korea, around 400 kms from Seoul. It used to be the capital of the Silla dynasty and most prominently features a number if little grass-covered hills, which are actually tombs of the late kings.

Apart from the tombs, there are a number of religious sites and temples, and at the time of our visit, they were preparing for celebrating the birthday of Buddha. It is customary to write some good wishes on a piece of ceramic tile, and so did we …of course, after negotiating it down to half price:)

Korean girl and boy bands

As mentioned before, South Korea is pretty much flooded by teenager girl bands and boy bands. Two excellent examples are Girls’ Generation and SHINee. Enjoy!
(further readings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:South_Korean_girl_groups and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:South_Korean_boy_bands)

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year!

To all our loyal readers, who actually celebrate it, we wish you an awesome Christmas time and a New Year full of adventures!

..and a little retrospective: celebrating new year’s eve one year ago in Valparaiso, Chile:

Seoul: traditions and modernism

As mentioned before, Paul and I were following different routes after Vietnam. The original plan, to go to Japan was crossed out by the severe events at Fukushima, so I decided to give a visit to Korea instead. So it happened to be that I arrived to Seoul without my sidekick, but I met here our friend and fellow traveller, Eunjung, who we had already met in Peru and Argentina. She did a great job introducing me to everything, that’s Korean, especially helped me a lot with eating only the best Korean food:) I have also met here Zoltan, an old friend and colleague of mine from Hungary …talk about a small World!
Arriving to Seoul one can not help but notice the modernism, the advanced infrastructure, and the number of big and small bridges. The current president, formerly the mayor of Seoul has strong connections in the construction business, the explanation can be. He was also the youngest CEO in Korea at the age of 35 and he consults with Chuck Norris on a daily basis.

Apart from the modernism, Seoul also puts great emphasis on the traditions. A number of temples can be visited and traditional costumes are worn at changing of the guards and other occasions. If you are lucky, you can also catch some tunes played on the traditional Korean gayageum.

A funny tradition in Korea that you take off your shoes before entering someone’s home. The first hostel I stayed happened to be in one bigger house, so the shoe store facility was right outside the front door. It was not that funny to take off your shoes in 5 degrees Celsius. Korean homes traditionally had neither chairs, nor beds: you were sitting on the floor and sleeping on the floor. On the plus side however, their floor-heating technology dates back quite some time, so once inside the house, you won’t be cold.
Korean cuisine is great, especially if you dig spicy food. Traditional Korean meals consist of a number of shared side dishes and one or two main dishes. Amongst the side dishes you can almost always find the ever-popular kimchi, a spicy kind of cabbage. Korean barbecue is made right at your table and Korean pancakes are a cheap and yummie alternative if you don’t feel like eating anything complicated. Soju is the local “sake”, and men and women are not afraid to get a bottle, even if they can not handle the alcohol content of it. Unique in Korea that they are using steel chopsticks. Originally the royal family started to use them, being afraid of food poisoning, but later on it became the number one utensil of the common people as well. I have to say, it feels much better to eat with them, than with their wooden and plastic brothers.

Korean writing might seem Chinese at first, but it is actually based on a standard alphabet. In a matter of days you can start reading out loud Korean words, even though you will have most of the time no idea what they mean:)

Being a Korean teenager has it’s own peculiarities. Young adults keep living with their parents, they are spoiled with technology, but dating a boyfriend/girlfriend has some very rigid rules. Couples have hardly any place to go if they want to spend some time together. That’d where DVD rooms come into picture. Originally these are small private rooms, that you can rent to watch a movie with your friends, but they are mostly used as a place of romantic encounters. No need to say, DVD rooms are not difficult to find anywhere in Seoul.
Youngsters are also flooded by hundreds of teen boy and girl bands. The recipe is always the same: a group of 6 or 7 teen stars, converted by excess plastic surgery, sings stupid songs on the TV all day long…literally … and they are popular.

One of the last days I stayed in Seoul, I hit the local fish market. Normally it is full of merchants and customers, but those days consumption dropped to a minimum as people were afraid of radioactive leakage at the shores of Japan. The local authorities did their best to tell people that the fish is safe and it is being monitored 24/7.

Ha Long Bay

From the very moment you arrive to Ha Noi, Vietnam, you will be overwhelmed by the numerous trip offers to Ha Long bay. The offers differ greatly in price, but from the pictures they show, you will have hard time to judge the quality. The rule here is do NOT take a one day trip! Take a 2 or 3 night trip, where you sleep on the boat, and try not to take the cheapest tour. Mid-priced tours offer okay cabins and delicious food on board. For the drinks you will have to pay a bit higher price onboard, but there are always plenty of little commerce boats around the main boat, where you can buy drinks and snacks. The tour-boats themselves are called “junks”, and from the outside they all look pretty much the same, but on the cheap ones you might have to inhale exhaust from the engine or have bad service on board. To sum up: don’t take the cheap tours!

The bay itself is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and 2 days ago it was also elected as one of the new seven natural wonders of the World (so actual our blog is:)). The islands and the little hidden bays greatly resemble to the ones you can see in Thailand and the Philippines, but here, you can also see a number of holy caves. Your imaginative tour guide will most likely tell you what kind of animals you can see, formed by the stalagmites and stalactites (most of them are actually “monkey”), but don’t worry if you don’t see the figures yourself. Try to take a tour that offers a stop at the Ti Top island. This island was named after the second cosmonaut who was entering the orbit around the Earth: Gherman Titov. (Apart from having an island named after him, there is a crater on the Moon named after him, and he holds the title “Hero of Labor of Vietnam”.) The view from the top of the island is magnificent, especially if you arrive before the flood of tourists and the surrounding islands are just about to wake up from the embrace of the morning fog.