My Second Big Asia Adventure

In Beijing I stayed at a beautiful hotel that had a big aquarium in the lobby and lots of flowers. It was a nice treat in the end of my trip. After checking in, I went to the modern district to have lunch with a friend of mine from New York. My friend was so nice, he took me to a fancy restaurant for lunch to have Peking Duck.

Modern Architecture in Beijing

After that I went to see the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. The Forbidden City is used to be the Imperial Palace for hundreds of years and it was forbidden for any common people to enter.

Forbidden City

It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was huge. I met an American boy while I was exploring the Forbidden City and I ended up hanging out with him for the next three days. He was a fun guy. After that I walked across Tiananmen Square. It was almost 5 kms long. I actually did not walk all the way to the end. I was too tired

Tiananmen Square

Next day I went to see the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace was about an hour away by subway. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There was a huge lake in the middle and there were different palaces and buildings around it. I spent half a day walking around these buildings. I also took a boat ride on the river.

Summer Palace

After the Summer Palace I visited the Beihai Park. It was a humungous park. It was pretty but windy.

Beihai Park

While walking towards the park I realized that Beijing was actually an ugly town. It is huge, polluted industrial town. It wasn’t a very exciting place at all. On my last day in Beijing and on my last day on this vacation I hiked the Great Wall. It was a wonderful experience. We hiked for about 3 hours. It was a pretty easy hike.

The Great Wall

At night I went out with my new American friend to get dinner and some drinks. Next day I took the plane back to Europe.

It was an incredible trip. A life time experience and I am so glad I was able to do it. Thanks for all, who followed me.

It took me about 22 hours on the train to get to Shanghai. The night trains in China are superb, so I didn’t mind the ride. This time my compartment was next to the wash room and I could hear Chinese people spitting in the wash room all the time. Chinese people spit all the time. I found this to be totally gross. In Shanghai I stayed at my German friend's place. Ivo is the coolest German I have ever met in my life. We had much fun together. On the first night we went out for dinner and to several bars. He showed me the Shnaghai skyline and the Bund.

Shanghai By Night

The Bund is a strip right by the river where people walk around and they can see the entire skyline of the modern Shanghai. I was so impressed by Shanghai. Imagine a city that looks like Paris on one side of the river and looks like New York on the other side. Shanghai was super cheap and incredibly modern. I ended up spending four days there. I took my friend’s bike and biked everywhere. I visited the Yuyuan Garden and the Old Town.

Old Town

YiYi Garden

Yuyuan Garden

Outside of the Yuyuan Garden there was a really big market. It was a nice place.

Old Town Market

At night Ivo and I went to the fake market. It had an incredible collection of designer bags and everything else you can think of. Next day I also visited the Antique Market and lots of shopping malls. I partied at Xintiandi at night. I shopped so much in Shanghai. It made me so happy. I also took the ferry over to Pudong. Pudong is the modern part of Shanghai. It had many skyscrapers and the architecture was super modern.

Pudong

I also saw a Chinese Acrobatic Show. It was impressive.

Shanghai Acrobatics

After 4 days of parting and shopping and biking I took another night train to reach Beijing, my last destination on this trip. The railway station in Shanghai is the most modern railway station I have ever seen in my life. It looked like a futuristic airport. I got on the train and the train was super modern as well. Each bed had a flat screen TV.

Yongshou is probably the most touristy place in the entire China. I actually loved that little town. The bus ride from Guilin took about an hour and a half. Then I was lost again for an hour until I found my hotel. At this point it was no surprise to me any more that noone spoke any English. Yongshou is a small town built around beautiful karst mountains.

Yongshou - Landscape

It is by the Li River.

Li River

The scenery is very beautiful in Yongshou. On the first day I decided to explore the city on foot. West Street was the main street in the center of town with a huge market. You could literally buy anything there from food to clothing to Chinese goodies. I loved that market. It was a great place to buy souvenirs and to eat.

Girl in a Traditional Outfit

In the afternoon it started raining and from that point on it pretty much rained for the entire time I was in Yongshuo. It was a bit annoying because I did not get to do any hiking or rock climbing as I planned. I still had a good time hanging out on the rooftop bars every night playing drinking games with the other tourists.

View of the Market from a Rooftop Bar

I also frequently visited the market to get food and souvenirs. I spent my afternoons in the McDonald’s reading Orwell’s Burmese Days waiting for the rain to stop so that I could go out. The interesting thing about McDonald’s in China is that there is one on every corner and they are all totally packed all the time. I think Chinese people love McDonald’s. On the last day I rented a bike and biked around the outskirts of the town, but I was getting wet all the time so I was not happy. After two days I had enough of the rain and decided to leave Yongshou and head up to Shanghai.

Guilin and Yongshou are one of the most famous sites in China, because of their famous karst formations and beautiful landscapes.

Guilin Railway Station

I arrived to Guilin early in the morning and checked into a hotel near the railway station. After that, I spent the day watching the rain outside from my hotel lobby. By the afternoon it cleared out a little and I decided to venture out to see the city. I quickly realized that it was impossible to find anything in the city, because nobody spoke any English. My map was in English too, so it was pretty much useless. So, I hopped on a double decker bus and rode it on the main road of the city to get an grasp of the town. The city was not very exciting to be honest. I found a big park with a big lake and two Chinese towers and some pretty bridges.

Guilin - Park

Guilin - Towers

I hung around there for a while, but then I headed back to the hotel, because I realized that there was not too many things to see in Guilin. I decided to take the bus the next morning to the Yongshuo.

So, I headed over to Mainland China on Tuesday morning. First I took the subway for about 45 minutes to the border of Hong Kong, then I walked across the border to Shenzhen.

The Border

I wanted to stay in Shenzhen for a day to explore the city, but I quickly realized that there was not much to see there. It was just another big city. So I hopped on the train to Guanzhou. Guanzhou is the third biggest city in China after Shanghai and Beijing with a population of about 6 million people. It took an hour an a half to reach Guanzhou by train from Shenzhen. When I got there I quickly realized that nobody spoke any English at all and noone understood me and I was so lost. I was wondering around for about an hour with my heavy backpack until I found a person who could help me find my hotel. I was staying on the main street of Guanzhou called Tianhe Beilu, which is like the 5th Avenue of the city, but noone could understand me and help me with directions. I was so frustrated at that point. I had to go to a 7/11 and eat a few candy bars to relieve the stress that I was going thru. In the end I found a girl who walked me to my hotel. She spoke no English as well. It was strange to follow someone who could not communicate with me at all. Next morning I realized that there was not much to see in Guanzhou either so I got a train ticket for the night train to Guilin. I spent the day walking up and down on the main street (Tianhe Beilu). The skyscrapers were all very new and they were bigger than any skyscrapers I had ever seen before. I felt very little and intimidated when I was walking around there.

Guanzhou, China

The city was not very exciting and I was afraid that I would get lost again so I did not venture out to see more. Guanzhou had an amazing modern subway system. I took the train at 6 o'clock to the railway station and it was one of the scariest moments of my whole trip. There were thousands of people on the train station and they all tried to get on the trains. When a train arrived, nobody waited for the passengers to get off the train, as soon as the door opened thousands of Chinese people started running to the doors and tried to squeeze into the train. It was scary. It was obvious to me on the first day in China that infrastructure in China was absolutely amazing. have the best railway system in the World. Even the night train was great, clean and convenient.

Night Train