Delhi - Hong Kong - China

I left India two weeks ago and as expected that didn't go without ups and downs, extreme pleasure mixed with extreme anger... but I'll save you the details. Let's just say I left Delhi the way you're supposed to leave it, the way India is! Haha!

On Saturday morning I arrived in Hong Kong; bright lights, big city! But what struck me the most was just how clean everything was there! Waw! Not even any cigarette butts on the street. Well, you would have to be crazy to throw it on the street because the fine is 150 euro. But it seems to work!

Also I got to experience the friendliness of the people within the first hour after arriving. My plane landed at 6 in the morning and I knew I had to take a bus to Tsim Sha Tsui, the neightbourhood where the hotel is. But typically me, I forgot to write down the address or a description of the route. So what to do at 7 in the morning? I finally found an internet shop and when I entered it was packed with teenagers who apparently had been playing online games since the night before. Yep, it was a special friday-night-deal. You play 12 hours for only 30 HKdollar. Some of them were sleeping behind the computer, others were still going strong! The manager asked me WHY I would want to use a computer that early and when I explained I had to find my hotel, he looked up everything for me, wrote it down, pointed it out on a map and told me where to go. I spent a few more minutes talking to him and when I left, I didn't have to pay him at all. He was happy to help! Wow, this definitely is NOT India any more! ;-D

I stayed a week in Hong Kong and it was the perfect "break"! After 3 months of traveling on my own (except the times I really got to know people), I got a visitor! Yep, my friend Niema came to visit me from Belgium. Seeing a familiar face was amazing and just for a week, it made me feel a little bit more like home. And though we didn't do that much, for me it was the perfect mixture of pleasure, culture and lazyness. A real holiday! Yep, I didn't even have to talk to new people, I talked to Niema every now and then so he wouldn't get bored, but there was no pressure... haha! ;-) 

Yes, maybe I should explain myself.... we TRIED to do a lot, but stuff got in the way with our plans every now and then. It was Chinese New Year and so everybody has time off to spend with their families. And Chinese love doing all the stuff tourists do, so the crowds were huge everywhere we went. We skipped the Buddha on Lantau Island and went to the beach instead. We skipped Macau because ferries were overbooked. But in the end, I had fun and enjoyed every minute of my "break"!

 

After a week it was time for me to 'hit the road' again and so after saying goodbye to Niema (sniff), I was on my way! I crossed the border to China on Saturday night and my first stop was Shenzhen. A bit sad to be on my own again, I soon found new company when I arrived at the Youth Hostel. And after a beer I fell asleep like a baby!

Shenzhen was worth while. It's a strange city. In just 30 years the number of inhabitants went from 800.000 to 14 million today! So this is one of those 'new cities'. It's a mixture of modern architecture, capitalist surroundings and worker neighbourhoods. Most people move to Shenzhen because of work and they live in big skyscrapers, all piled up together. The stretch of land between Shenzhen and Guangzhou is about 200 kilometres of factory after factory. It is one of the most industrialised areas in China. My next stop was Guangzhou, so on the train there I got to see that street of factories. A bit weird to think a government can just move people around, but on the other hand the people themselves don't seem to mind. At least, that's what they tell me...They all seem to be very, very proud of China as a nation. Maybe you can't critisize the government, but apart from that they consider China one of the most free countries in the world. And for them the most important thing is that everybody is equal! Well, I haven't made up my mind yet about China. For that I have a lot more traveling to do, but it is very refreshing to be treated equal again as a woman! After India that is for me the biggest change here in China. People smile at me and talk to me and invite me... I feel good here!

I'm now still in Guangzhou which is surprisingly a very interesting city. I had to pass through herre to go to my next destination, Hainan. But I decided a few days and I'm glad I did. Maybe because of the Asian Games that were held here a little while ago, but this city is clean and friendly and the architecture is super! There are old parts with the typical hutongs (little Chinese houses), there is a European area with beautiful, old, colonial buildings and you have the new modern buildings and lightshows... at night I took a river cruise and you don't even have enough eyes to see everything that is going on on the banks! Apart from that I visited White Cloud Mountain and that little bit of exercise did me good! I went to the biggest, Buddhist temple here, an old familly-village and the tea market. There is soo much to see and to do, and only so many hours in a day. I feel like there is more to explore, but tonight I'm taking the nighttrain. The weather turned really cold again here in Guangzhou and so I'm really happy that by tomorrow morning I'll be in Hainan. The most tropical part of China and with the freshest air! Finally!