dinsdag 23 augustus 2011

Relative quiet days

Hey there again!
It has been a while again since I last wrote something on my blog. To be honest, not a lot has been happening lately, mainly due to the weather. The last week it has been terribly hot in the area of Chengdu, so hot that it was not possible for me anymore to go visit places. But that does not mean that nothing happened of course!

zaterdag 13 augustus 2011

The giant Buddha of Le Shan

Well hello there again!

This is the continuation of my previous blog post where I visited Du Jiang Yan (都江堰) and ended in my hotel in Le Shan (樂山). Having spent a night in a hotel and sleeping with the air-conditioning on to the max, I felt renewed the next day. I also managed to watch the news in a language that I can understand (English) for the first time since I arrived in China. Both refreshed and updated of the world news, I felt it was a great start of the day. 
When in China, you need to eat the local food, and so breakfast should also be Chinese. I had rice porridge with Baozi (steamed meat buns), delicious! 

And off I went to a place that I have been looking forward to visiting:  the 71 meter tall Buddha in Le Shan! So I got there in the morning using the same tactic as the day before, get there before the main crowd arrived.

My trip to Du Jiang Yan

Hello there!

Sorry that I have not updated my blog lately, I lost my accessibility to Blogger for the last couple of days :( So this blog is slightly outdated...

! I have been walking a lot for the last two days as I have visited two prominent places of interest in the surrounding area of Chengdu.  On the first day I visited the Du Jiang Yan (都江堰)!

When visiting places that attract many tourists, one thing you must remember: get up early and leave early so you arrive there before it’s crowded with thousands of people, which is exactly what I did. It was arround an hour of driving and I arrived there before the heat of the Chinese sun was present.

maandag 8 augustus 2011

My first days in Chengdu

Hey guys!


So I got on the plane last Friday at a pretty late time, at 10 in the evening and took off to my next destination. Somehow people in China do not care too much about the entertainment system in planes, because the plane again did not have anything to do in (do something about it ChinaAir!)
I arrived 2 and a half hours later at the land which is known for its spicy food, pandas and pretty girls… Yes, I have arrived in Chengdu in the province of Sichuan. 


woensdag 3 augustus 2011

My departure and arival to Beijing

Finally the day has come. I have been looking forward to this day for years. As I said goodbye to my parents and family, it finally sunk into me: I am going to China. We stepped into the car on this hot summer day, one of the few these last months, and off we went to the airport of Dusseldorf. One and a half hour later I arrived, said goodbye to my mother (she was the driver) and my adventure begins. A feeling of both nervousness and excitement went through me, as this was my first time that I leave to a far country on my own, let alone stay in a foreign country for half a year!



Walking around makes people hungry, just as it did to me. Here and there I had something to eat, including some nice pancakes. The first portion of pancakes I was supposed to get somehow exploded in the waitress’ hand as she was handing it over, which caused pieces of pancake to fly around over the bar.  Plate shattered, pancake everywhere, chocolate sauce over my hand, it was quite a scenario. I did in the end get a second portion for free, but what a waste for the first one to “explode” as the pancake was de-li-cious! 

There is only one thing remaining before I leave to China, and that is waiting…

Well, I didn’t wait that long there actually, only about 45 minutes. Got on board of the plane, chased some Germans out of the seat I was supposed to sit on, and laid back and enjoy the onboard entertainment… But faith didn’t want me to amuse myself onboard. There was no entertainment at all in the plane, so my flight became the longest 10 hours that I have experienced in recent memory.

The first thing I noticed when I finally arrived in Beijing is that everything is big. From the airport, to the flat apartments, from the campus to the city itself, the scale of things outweighs the scale of the Netherlands by at least 5 fold. It took me well over one and a half hour by metro to reach my hostel from the airport! Heat is another something you cannot ignore in Beijing. The best way to describe the feeling is as if you open a hot oven, and instead of moving back, you force yourself into the oven. Sweat covered my entire body within minutes.

I checked into the hostel, took a cab to Beijing University to meet my contact person, got a tour around the campus, had dinner and went back to my room to take a refreshing shower and we have ended up where we are now, and that is in my room typing thing blog entry.
Unfortunately I couldn’t take many pictures after my arrival in Beijing, but I promise you guys that in the future, there will be more pictures!

See you,
We Fong