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Allright! After spending about a halfhour writing on our blog, the page of course disappeared, no where to be found… so now, after some bad words, a huge load of frustration, we start all over again, this time in Microsoft Word..
Well.. As we tried to say, many of you have already gotten most of the story about what have been going on with us the last couple of weeks, but for the rest of you, we will now try to sum it up in this blog-update.
It all started on an EARLY morning the 12th of January, the departure day. We said our goodbye's to our parents before we, exited and nervous, went through the security check, and went to our flight-gate. It was a fantastic feeling seeing everything for the last time, and thinking that it would be about 4months before we again would set foot on Norwegian ground. Little did we know, that this thought would be threatened only a short week after...
After an intermediate landing in Amsterdam, we landed in Paris. This is where we would spend our next 8-9hours.. Well, we were prepared with books, music and a stack of playing cards. After wandering around for an hour or so, we found a café where we sat for the next 5-6 hours. The seat angle was about 90degrees, so it safe to say, it's not easy to find a relaxing position that will last for more than about 10-15minutes at a time. It was also freezing, which didn't exactly increase our comfort. After about 5-6hours and countless position-variations, we walked to the gate. Finally a place to lie down! And a couple of hours later we were at last on our way to Beijing, China!! A couple of movies, an hour or two of sleep and two sets of meals later, we landed. We exchanged some American dollars to Chinese money, got our hostel name and address written in Chinese signs and jumped on a bus that would take us as near as possible to our residence. We had promised each other NOT to duck under the pressure, and take a taxi. We were determined to find it by foot, no matter how long we had to walk or how much time we had to use. Well…We got of the bus and started walking, pumped up with confident!! (Maybe a little too MUCH confident, but still.. ) Hehe..
Some non-english-speaking Chinese later we found one man that knew enough English to make a conversation. We showed him the address and he found a map in a kiosk for us to buy. It was only written in Chinese, so not very useful for us, but the man made an effort to find out where we were going. After about 15minutes he pointed out the direction to go, and the location on the map and we started walking. We turned to each other and wondered if any of us understood what he ment, which we didn't.. But we started walking anyway. And after half an hour or two, countless direction advises in Chinese and quite a few miles of walking in 5-6degrees we finally found the right area where the Youth Hostel was suppose to be. We found a man who knew where it was, so he just started walking, ensuring we were following right behind. We walked through a quite narrow and poor street and our adrenalin started pumping. "Where were we going? This doesn't look very friendly.. was he going to rob us?".. Five minutes later we could see the sign "Xinmao Youth Hostel" YEEEY!!! We made it!! And NO taxi!! We were bursting of pride
After signing in at the frontdesk, we were both anxious to go strait to bed for a couple of hours. We were both suffering from jetlag, and the only way to get away from the cold, was to hide under the blanket. Now, normally, when you sit down on a bed, you expect a certain kind of bounce-back, but not on these beds, no! It was like sitting down on to a plastic mattress, only covered by a thin layer of sheet. But tired as we were, we had no problem sleeping for three hours straight. When we woke up, at maybe 6 o'clock, we figured it was time to get something to eat. We found this cheap-looking restaurant only 5 minutes walking from the hotel (which was the longest we could bare to walk without freezing to death). Needless to say, none of us knew how to order anything in Chinese.Lucky for us, they had a menu in English, and we felt a bit more safe, only to discover that the menu consisted of every bits and parts of anatomy on the animals we could choose from, EXCEPT the parts we would actually want to choose! Chicken heart, liver, feets, brains and what not. We decided there and then to go veggies, and ordered something we felt where pretty safe. Turid ordered garlic, and Line ordered onion. We thought that it was VERY cheap, costing only 1RMB each, which is 1 krone! And because we had read about how Chinese food always serves with rice and tea, we felt almost confident to get an OK meal. What we got was 40grams each of what we had ordered, nicely speared, no rice and no nothing on the side. No wonder it was cheap
After feeling a bit embarrassed and even more hungry, the waitress must have felt sorry for us, and gave us the menu once more, so we could order some more. We wounded up getting two plates of curry-rice and Coca-Cola. Still cheap!
When we got back to the hotel, we where so cold from walking the streets, cause the wind made the temperature dropping to probably -15 degrees, and we where so happy that the time was enough for us to be able to go to bed without feeling silly about it, and with the excuse that we had to get up at 6.30 am the next morning, to go off exploring some of China's most popular sightseeing-spots, tourist style!
Our guide, Justin, met us at 7.20 am, and luckily it was just us + Cheryl, a lovely lady from Sydney, joining the busride.First we went to see the great Tombs of 13 of the Ming Dynasty Emperors. Afterwards our guide lured us to go check out the Jade-"museum", which in reality was a gigantic shop. Neither one of us fell for the cheap trick, and after some waiting, we drove on towards the Great Wall, Badaling. The wall, covered in stairs, was steep, and Cheryl, at the age of 63 had to retreat, while we continued our way towards the top. It was crowded, and full of school-kids. Many of the kids wanted to take a picture with us, which made us feel very embraced and welcomed. After maybe 1 hour of climbing the wall, we found our bus, and headed for lunch. Finally we got some good Chinese food, and some not so good chinese white wine, containing 53% of alcohol! On our way back to the hotel, we stopped by some more "museums". Handcrafted copper-vases and silk, both pretty amazing to watch in the making, but not of our interest to buy. Back at the hotel we both were exhausted and freezing, and once again we hopped under our covers. Noodles was our only dinner this day, and for many days to come!
The next day we were ready for some sightseeing on our own. We took the subway to The Heavenly Peace and the Forbidden City. It was, if possible, even more freezing this day, but we felt the need to see some more of China before "throwing in the towels". So we took the time, wandering through The Heavenly Peace and The Forbidden City, taking as much pictures as possible. Then we walked out again, took the subway back, only stopping for some food at McDonald's before crashing in the hostelroom the rest of the night. Line was beginning to feel more and more ill, having a hard time breathing, and feverish. But we got to sleep in the end.
We woke up an hour before the alarmclock, and Line soon discover that all of her paper-tickets were missing!! This would only be the beginning of our problems to come….Luckily our ticket from Beijing to Hong Kong was electronic, so we could postpone our problem until we got to Hong Kong. After the 4hour long planeride we landed on the airport in Hong Kong. Full of optimism we made our way to the China Airline counter to explain our problem. Line had copies of her tickets, but this was not enough. The lady in the counter or the Queen b**** as we would come to name her in all our frustration could not help us. Crying obviously didn't help either..
So now we started countless calls to the insurance company, Kilroy travel's, Line's parents and so on… After spending 2hours on the airport, it started to get late, and we got on a bus to the centre of Hong Kong. Line got a phone from Kilroy saying the tickets could be sorted out at a travel agency in Hong Kong. YEEY! Our optimism started to rise yet again. We got to the Anne Black Guest House, exhausted. Went to sleep quite quickly, only to wake up to another problem.. Line's condition had gotten a lot worse, and she was now in the need of a doctor!! Some panic-attacks and phonecalls later Line had gotten a hold of a doctor through the insurance company. Dr. Chow arrived in the morning, and took us to the hospital. For what Line thought would only be a simple ex-ray check and a prescription for some antibiotic, expanded to her having to be admitted to the hospital for 3-5days. Another stream of panic and anxiety rushed over our heads. What now??
Well, after 2 or 3 hours waiting and many filled out forms later Line got a single room. The room had a big plasma TV, a nice sofa for Turid to sit in, and an amazing view from the window. WOW…this wasn't too bad we thought. Well..we got to enjoy it for about 5minutes before they came back.. They were sorry about the mix-up, but Line had to, because of her condition of lung-infection, move to an isolated room instead. If Turid now wanted to come visit her, she needed to protect herself with a gown, glows, cap, protective glasses and a mask to cover mouth and nose. A bit weird, but oh so necessary according to the hospital-staff.
The next 4days was filled with hospital-visits for Turid, and treatment and getting well for Line. Over these 4days we went through a roller-coaster of emotions. We were not sure of what would happen with the trip, and if Line had to go home to Norway. LUCKILY, on the 5th and last day at the hospital we got the good news. Line was well enough to go on with the trip, and the insurance-company was going to cover the hospital bill! Finally the tide had turned!
We went back to the apartment to Turid's aunt and uncle, which would be our home the next week. It's now Saturday the 24th of January, and in four days we will go on with our trip, flying to Bangkok, Thailand. We are now very happy that the tickets are sorted out, and we can move past this not so good period, going on to what we hope to be a fabulous journey for the both of us
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