Hey People

We are now ready to report some of our adventures in this land of no postcards, also known as China!! We have moved quite a bit since we last posted on our site, and we are currentlly in the beautiful little village of Yangshou. Well actually its a huge town, 300.000 people, but it has a nice villagy feel to it, that we have really been missing in our travels.

Well we better start from the begining, we left Beijing for the great wall, early morning on the 27 of september, and drove to a very secluded part of the wall, and I mean secluded, beside our group there were only like five other tourist!! It was avsome!! We went for our 10 km walk as soon as we arrived at the wall, it was an amazing experience. We had the best weather, clear sky and 19C. Some parts of the wall were really steep and hard to climb, but for the first part of our treck, we all had our own personal little chinese farmer\guide to help drag us up the hills. They were grat fun, because as we walked, they told us about their farms, and their everyday lives.

We spent the night in the coldest hostel ever, but some of us (tuz, not Trine) got up at 4:15 to treck up on the wall and enjoy the sunrise. It was really cold, I thought I would freeze my arse of, but it was so worth it!!! And we didnt have any other plans for the day, so it did not matter that I was really tired. That morning we departed from the great wall later that morning, and headed back into Beijing, to catch the first of our much hated overtrains!! And we really do hate them. Six people per compartment, but no dors or evern a screen, and you really sleep like crap on them. (Were still sore and annoyed from our last traintrip 23 hours + 75 min delay... Imagine, a slower service than DSB, now that is impressive.)

But after 13 hours we pulled into Xi'an. It is a rather large city as well, but we kept to the inside of the citywalls, so we were okay. The first day we mostly just slept or walked around a bit. we went to the litterary street, and saw their little marked, were they sold everything you would need to do chinese caligraphy and watercolor paintings. Afterwords we retired to our rooms, because we wanted to be awake and alert for our trip to the terracotta warriors the next morning. We loved the Terracotta Warriors, not only because they are absolutely amazing to behold, but also because the whole museum is an active digsite, so our inner archaeologists went totally crazy. We just flitted about taking pictures and talking about how bad their profiles were. (profiles are the earthedges that are left standing.) We do not belive that the profil-police would have approvede, no they most certainly would not!!

We spent our last day in Xi'an getting lost in the muslim quarter. We ended up in a part of town were there were absolutely no other white people, and as a consequens we were starred at constantly! When we finally found our way back, we noticed that we were on North Street, and that was bad, because according to Frank (our chinese leader) you get mugged on that street. We didn't get mugged, although we were witnes to a very unsucsesfull mugging attempt. Afterwards we walked all of the citywalll, wich was quite nice, before we went back to the hotel, to meet with the others and travel to Shanghai!!

The city of Wenthworth Miller commercials (IMDB.com will tell you who he is), also known as Shanghai, was an absolutly horrid experience!! It was dirty and smoggy, and annoying little in you face all the time "bagwatchtshirt" selling chinese people were everywhere. They poked, they cut you of, and if we had stayed for another day, we would have seriously injured some of them!!!! There wasnt really all that much to see in Shanghai, but we went out drinking on our first evening there, and tuz had two beers, and she drank them too!! Trine drank as well, but Tuz had beer... Tuz hates beer, we have pictures!! Other than that we really did not do much, exept getting lost, oh and on our second day there, we ate lunch in an allyway and saw a traditional chinese garden... It was nice, and our 5 yuan lunch did not make us sick!! Wuhu succses!! That evening we also went to see the acrobats of Shanghai, they were really good!! much better than the Kungfu show in Beijing. It is just so amazing what those people can do.

Anyway, then after almost 2 whole days in horrid Shanghai, we finally boarded our longest overnight train, which was also the grocest. But it did not matter because we were leaving the city of polution!!

We arrived in Yangshou yesterday evening, and went for a group dinner, before we retired to our rooms in Fawlty Towers (hihihi). This morning we got up quite early, because we had a 9 o'clock Kungfu lesson in the public park. It was great fun, and we are now abel to do the 20 basic steps of Kongfu! Afterwards we went running with Sharan and Karin, before we hurried back to the hotel to change, befor our 11 o'clock chinese painting lesson. We painted bamboo and leaves, and yes it was much harder than it sounds!! We got ink all over ourselves, of course!! But it was fun! Now we are simply passing time, untill tonight, where we are going to a lightshow on the river. We might go shopping... Yer that is probably what we will do.

Yay Tuz is looking forward to tomorrow, where we are going kayaking for four hours!! WUHUU! NOO slow death (from Trine).

Joke of the day:

I would rather fill my ears with red hot coals, than with Chinese music!

Matress comparisons:

I have had Menstruation pads thicker than some of these matresses!

And on that note

Bye Bye

T & T

"Keeping your property with you at all times, in case of lost"