Bye Bye China

I left Zhengzhou after a few days with a terrible trauma, because of the heavy car accident I was involved in. I`m just joking, some crazy women drove into my taxi, but very slow and without big damage. 

So I really have no good reason why I didn’t write for so long. I was very busy in the next city I went to. In fact, Chengdu is an interesting place.

Chengdu:

This enormous city is famous for a lot of things, especially its heavy air pollution, the crazy drivers, lazy people, crazy and beautiful girls, the most spicy food in China and the biggest Panda Research Centre in the world just to tell you a few. I personally didn’t know of anything other than the Panda Research Centre before I arrived but I knew that I had to visit it.

After a horror train ride of 21 hours, I arrived very tired in the city which I would learn to love later. 

I got to my Hostel and the first person I met was the Swedish guy David. It turned out that the next four days with him and the other guys (Daniel & Daniel from the U.S.) in the hostel would be great. 



We went to a lot of bars and tried to find people to join us for Karaoke (KTV). Unfortunately this didn’t work out, because strangely all the people we asked, didn’t like KTV. 

That's very strange in a country where KTV`s are at every street-corner. 

I just really had a blast with those guys! 

After the guys left I went to an Anime convention, also an Idea of David. It was great, all the Chinese in very interesting cosplay costumes. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Google “Cosplay”.  

At these conventions, usually all the people are taking pictures of all the people in costumes. And you can imagine who forgot to take his camera with him… right. 

But the funny thing was that the people came to make pictures of me the whole time, even without a costume.. Blond guy in China, once again..

In the days before, we also went to the Panda Research Centre, which was really nice as it was possible to see the animals up close.

In the three weeks of my stay, I learned a lot about the Chinese culture. Some things are better than in Europe and we should learn from it and other things are pretty fucked up. 

Things I liked:

The people were so friendly and open when I went out, not on the streets where everybody is busy, but as soon the people have some time, you can talk to them easily (if they can understand you). That’s a big difference to especially Switzerland, where the most people don’t want to speak to anybody they don’t know.

For me something which would be very important to have it in the EU and the U.S. is the mandatory sport education for all the kids. They have to exercise once a day for 30 minutes or maybe an hour (The whole school together). Also the big companies do that with their employees, it’s a good way that everybody stays in shape and gets their heads free after half a day of work. 

I was amused when I saw it the first time in a shopping mall, where the whole crew of a restaurant was dancing in front of all the people for about 20 minutes. 

But after seeing how few people are obese here in China, I really think this is a good thing.

What was also very nice, are the street gyms. While walking through the streets, I always saw some places where there were some older people working out. The government actually put some training machines all over the cities. (Something like in an actual gym. Not exactly the same but its sufficient to train your whole body) And the people actually use them, no matter if there are 500 people walking by in 2 minutes.

Things which I didn't like:

The first thing on the list is the horrible air pollution. God, CHINA! On the highways it’s nearly impossible to breathe. In Chengdu, you can never see the sun or the blue sky, even if it`s sunny. All the trees, bushes and flowers are grey from all the dust in the air! I really don’t understand why the government is not doing more to fix this problem.

And the ignorance and selfishness of the people sometimes, even if they are friendly, is pretty annoying. For example; In all the big fast-food restaurants you cannot find a table to sit down and eat. 
Why? Because the people just keep sitting there for hours, nothing to drink or to eat on the table, only their head because they are sleeping. And the personnel doesn't do anything to make them leave.  And even if they see, you’re an actual customer, who bought something, they wouldn’t stand up to let you sit down.

Another thing and probably the worst: China is not that famous for sex tourism, but I think it’s one of the worst countries in the Asian region concerning this matter. 

On the one side I found out that even if prostitution is illegal in China, the business is booming. The normal Chinese people go to massage places and saunas or some KTV`s which offer these services. And all the business people, especially from foreign countries use these services..

Wow, what a long post, but well, a lot to say. Here some more..

China is huge and I had to find out that their food varies heavily per region. While I loved Beijing and Shanghai food, I absolutely hated the food here in Szechuan province. It is very spicy but does lack in flavour. While I like the spicy part, the lack in flavour is its downfall.. By the way, don't expect to get any western style Chinese food here, what we eat in Europe has nothing to do with Chinese food..

Chengdu was also great to make business contacts. I met a lot of interesting people, like my friend Sunny from Korea, who opens a franchise chain in China, Dani from Israel, the head of the Jewish community in Chengdu and owner of an art gallery and a hotel, or Yann from Switzerland (romande) who is F'n'B-Manager in a five star hotel. And that’s only to tell a few. 

Maybe you already know that I always will keep open my eyes for business ideas and contacts on this trip, so Chengdu was a good location for this.

Before I left Chengdu, I went to the pet market. The pets live under very bad conditions, and you can buy all kind of illegal stuff, like for example they sold a huge mountain cat there (de. Luchs  / en. Lynx). 

I really wanted to buy a puppy there, so I could have my dog with me the whole travel, but because I had a flight to Kunming a few days later I wasn’t sure that I could take him with me.  

At the next day I went with Dani and his wife to a mountain (900 meters is a mountain here), around two hours from Chengdu. 

This was the first time I saw real nature here in China… It was very nice there, bamboo forests and waterfalls. That reminded me what I really want to see on this trip; nature, mountains, villages, authentic people, new things... So far it has been mostly cities..

On the 13^th March I finally left Chengdu with the plane to Kunming, which was pretty cheap. The train would have cost the same and taken about ten hours instead of two. 

Arriving in Kunming was nice. I finally could see the blue sky and the sun for the first time in nearly two months. It was quite hot in comparison with Chengdu. 26 degrees instead of 11. The air was amazing for China, and the whole city is a beautiful green Oasis. I can definitely highly recommend to visit the city.

After two days, I had a sleeper bus to Hekou, but I missed it because the east bus station was like two hours outside the city with the Bus. And I thought 90 minutes would be more than enough time. So I had to take the bus on the next day. Lucky me, I had one day in reserve before my visa expired.

When we arrived in Hekou (China), the bus was stopped and a Vietnamese police guy controlled all passports. I was very confused, because I thought we already arrived at the border, but it was only for entering the city. Also later I saw Vietnamese military and police on the Chinese side of the border. For me this was really strange as we dont let other armies enter our territory like this in Switzerland.

Also the Chinese customs were also confused when they checked my visa. I thought maybe because it was day 60 out of 60 days allowed. Later he told me that the customs-officer in Beijing did not stamp the date into my passport when I entered China... But fortunately they could check it in their computer and I was allowed to leave the country. 

Before I left, some high ranked military guy stopped me again to check my passport. I am not sure if he ever saw a Swiss passport before but he checked all the security seals for a couple of minutes before he let me pass. Maybe he suspected me of being a spy because of this customs issue..

My arrival in Lao Cai, Vietnam, was not that nice, unfriendly customs and annoying motor taxi riders went hard on my mood. 

I was warned before from an Australian guy to never take a taxi in Vietnam, but with my huge backpack I could never take one of these motorbikes. So I tried and walked for like two hours looking for the bus station. But finally, I gave up and took a taxi anyways. Turns out I was really far away from the bus station, and the taxi still only charged me 20'000 VND (5$). 

I learned one of the most important lessons by that:
Always get your own impressions and don’t blindly believe what others tell you. Could have saved a lot of time and energy..

And finally I come to an end. Here a picture of the delicious tomato-mozzarella salad I got in Lao Cai. 

Not really what I expected, but as I found out, it’s here often the case that they exactly give you what’s written on the menu, but not what you expect. 

Like a roasted cheese sandwich is for example a roasted bread with one triangle cheese (the creamy one in aluminium foil). 

!!!CLICK FOR FLICKR PHOTOS!!!