Picture trouble...

Hey hey! I see it's been a while... Thanks for the messages again! Good to hear from you guys. En wel een soort van geruststelling dat jullie t zelfde probleem hadden met de simkaart Han ;) I'm indeed in Shanghai now! But got a bit sick here... Well, I'll just start where I was left first; Emei Shan...

Stairs, stairs, and more stairs...
After Chendu, we took the bus to Emei Shan; a Buddhist mountain in the south of Sichuan. We didn't really know what to expect, but decided that we had to try some climbing anyway. Our plan with a few hours of climbing and cable cars for the rest of the way up didn't seem to work out; we could either take the bus all the way up, or climb. So we decided to climb... Up to the busstation, and then take the bus back. There was another cable car going even further to the top, but we heard that due to the fog the view wasn't always too good. So we left our luggage in a hostel and started our journey.
The first bit was easy; it looked like a sort of boulevard on the mountain, with a lot of (mainly Chinese) tourists and even some on high heels. The view was amazing; still very tropical with some nice little waters and lots of mist at the top of the mountains. When we walked a bit further the tourists started to disappear and the boulevard started to become stairs. We walked upto the first monastery in about two hours and we thought the second one was about the same distance away, so we decided to go on a bit and find a bed there. But offcourse that was a bit harder as we thought... After three hours of endless stairs we were almost dying... But just before nightfall we finally found the monastery. It was pretty back to basics, but taking a shower was the best thing ever, after climbing in the hot humid Sichuan weather all day...
After a reasonably good night of sleep we had to face the rest of our mountain. We read a bit in the Rough Guide of some English guys and found out that what we thought was 6 km's of stairs, was actually 15... So that's why they were so endless... Apparently we had walked about 20 km's the first day, and we had 20 more to go (and 2 km up). So we had to face it; going back was not really an option. To make it even better, I realised that I somehow managed to delete all our pictures... Great. So we started our day pretty annoyed and grumpy.
After climbing in silence for about 2 hours we arrived at the first monastery for that day, where the monkey zone started... A monkey followed us for a while, and then even jumped the fence to be on eye-height with us. We showed our hands to tell him that we didn't have anything and luckily he was convinced by that. So he passed us and then led us the way up for a while... A guy told us that it was only about 30 minutes more to our second monastery for that day, so that made us a bit hopefull again. But the monastery just didn't appear... We already climbed stairs again for some hours and we were frustrated with the guy telling us that we were almost there. When after like 3 hours we finally saw a monastery. When we asked it seemed that we were already at the next monastery! Apparently we missed the second one. I don't know how that was possible, but it was a real delight! (couldn't believe it at first...) At the monastery we met a Belgium guy (Bert) and his Chinese girlfriend (Cindy). The guy was a computer engineer and told us that we could probably recover the photo's! Hurrah! What a hapiness at once :) Bert and Cindy also wanted to go to the busstation on top, so we climbed together. All the happy news and our new company suddenly made the climbing a lot easier. Even the pooring rain at the top of the mountain couldn't hurt us anymore! We just put on our poncho and sang some (Dutch) songs! After a few hours of climbing in the rain we got to the busstation! There was nothing to see there, as it wasn't the top of the mountain yet. So we just decided to take the bus as fast as possible, soaked as we were...
Back at the hostel we took a shower (which was a bit of a bummer as it didn't get warm) and shared our heroic stories with some other people in the hostel that were planning their trip up the mountain ;) (I even practised my french a bit again with some Parisiens). After all the trip was quite hard, but it was like a major work-out session in a huge sauna, so we had good Sichuan skin now :) And the whole trip had also been beautifull, with astonishing views.

Retreat day
The next day we planned to go to Leshan to see the big Buddha, but we were a bit tired and also my stomach didn't feel too good so we decided to retreat a day in the Emei Shan's hot springs! Offcourse by the end of the day we were both red... (Dian is blessed with the same kind of skin as me) But it was quite relaxed! In the end of the afternoon we still got the bus to Leshan (about an hour from Emei Shan), and we found a hostel there. The hostel was a bit shabby, but the staff was really really nice. And even though people had told us not to stay in Leshan, because there was nothing to do besided the Buddha, we really liked it! We walked past the river, had a tea there and watched Chinese people gambling...

71-meter high Buddha
Next morning we went to the big buddha; apparently the largest in the world! It sits inside the mountain at the side of the river, to protect the city against the 'monster of the river' (floods). We took a guide to get some side-information for a change. Which was a good idea, because now we finally understood all the typical things we always saw in all the temples. The story about the buddha was also interesting, because apparently a monk begged for money all through China to build the buddha, and then when people wanted to rob him he told them; you can get my eye, but you won't get a penny of this money. And he gave his eye. True story...
The same day we took the bus to Chongqing (we had a pretty tight schedule), where we wanted to take a boat over the Yangtze river. But we arrived late in the evening, so it was not possible anymore to book the boat for the next day, and we had to stay a day in Chongqing.

camera-Jinx
We actually wanted to evade this city as it's a major industry-city and we feared a bit of Datong-disguistingness... But we had to stay a day, so we decided to see how bad it was. We walked around with an Australian guy from our hostel. We wanted to take a cable-car over the river, but everything turned out to be closed (on sunday), so we just walked around. Chongqing is now one of the biggest cities of China (or actually the biggest if you count all the agglomerations), and it's build in no-time, so everywhere you look there are ugly high flats. There was also a lot of trash everywhere, but it was not as disguisting as Datong luckily... We walked to a park where we had a great view of the city. Then we went to a supermarket to buy some things for our boat-trip the next day, and when we got out my camera was gone! Aaaarrgghhhhh! It must have been stolen... So again we lost all of the pictures, and this time we couldn't restore it. Luckily my card with all the pictures was in Dian's back to get restored in Holland, and we used Dian's card now, so we only lost the pictures of Leshan. But it still sucks! I guess there's a jinx on me, cause two years ago I lost my camera before I went to Marocco :( I was ready to get very grumpy and depressed again, but the Australian guy said; well, there's nothing you can do now, so let's go on. And I guess he was right.... We went to a camera-store where I bought a new camera, and then we had some beers on the terrace of our hostel.

Yangtze-river
Next day we had to wake up really early to take our hydrofoil over the Yangtze. We first had to take the bus to Wanzhou to step on board there. The boat looked quite spacy, almost like a submarine. And it was fast! Well, we already figured so, as we cruised to Yichang in about 11 hours, where the cruise boats took 3 to 4 days (with a lot of touristy stops). The view was great, we passed the famous three gorges. Which must have been even more impressing a few years ago, before the government build the famous three-gorges dam, and the water was about 170 meters lower. (A lot of people had to move due to this dam, and a lot of historical and natural sights have been flooded). The water in the Yangtze was actually quite spoiled; there was trash drifting everywhere... What a shame.
Arriving at our stop, we had no time to see the dam unfortunately. As we had to catch our bus to Yichang. Our hostel in Chongqing had arranged everything, so we got picked up from the station in Yichang and taken to our hostel there. Most people don't spend the night in Yichang, so it's not very touristy and we got a real Chinese hotel, with a Karaoke bar! We decided to check it out, and we didn't get in or the first (old) Chinese guy already asked me to dance, haha. Luckily it was an easy dance ;) And then offcourse we had to face the karaoke! So we checked the list with English songs and found 'Killing me softly'. Luckily the guy behind the panels understood that our karaoke-skills were not as good as the Chinese, so he put the volume a bit louder and you didn't hear us too well :) But we weren't ready yet after this, 'hey jude' followed and then 'my heart will go on; they just started the music and put the microphones in our hands, we had no choice... And the music went lower and lower... Nice, haha. Then we decided that we had to sleep 'cause next morning we had to take an early bus to Wuhan, to buy traintickets from there to Shanghai!

Solar eclipse
The next morning there would be a solar eclipse. We met some people that travelled especially to China to see this. We were in our bus on the way to Wuhan when the great event took place. But I think our view couldn't have been better! There was a clear sky, and we walked to the front of the bus so that we could see the sun through the big front window. It was quite cool, like a ultra-fast sunset... A bit later we arrived in Wuhan, bought our traintickets to Shanghai and took our last sleeper together (with Dian). It was the best we've had; really clean and almost no people in it, so we had a great sleep and when we woke up we arrived in Shanghai!

Shanghai
One of Dian's friends from Utrecht moved to Shanghai to set up a business, so we went to his place once we arrived. We settled down, took a shower and went shopping in QiPuLu (Cheap road; and cheap it was...). Then we went to walk through the city a bit and walked past the Bund where you have nice old buildings on one hand, and on the other side of the river very new modern buildings. Pretty cool, but unfortunately they are reconstructing the whole place... They seem to be reconstructing all of Shanghai, probably because of the world Expo next year. We took the ferry to the other side of the river and walked around a bit in the modern area. It started to get dark and the neon-lights went on, pretty impressive.
Next morning we went to the propaganda poster museum. We walked to the french concession to get there. It's funny; like you have China Town in Paris, you have the french concession here... And actually it did remind me a bit of france, they even sell real croissants. The museum was well hidden, we had to ask some people; there is no sign anywhere. I guess it's not a museum the government really likes... But it was really good! The posters were divided in time-periods, starting in the 1940's with mainly anti-US campains, and pro-Corean. Followed by even more anti-US and anti-repression posters, then pro-China and pro-working class and then the prominent pictures of Mao and the revolution. Untill, I think it was in the 70s, that Deng Xiaoping banned the propaganda posters. After the museum we took the taxi to the old town, which is really nice! We wanted to go to the Yunuan Gardens, but I started to feel really bad so I sat down in a theehouse (that turned out to be famous; there were quite some pictures of Bill Clinton there), and had some tea and a coke (advice of my sister; coke kills everything) while Dian went to check out the gardens. Afterwards, I felt a bit better and we walked to Nanjing Road; the big street with all the shopping centres and neon banners. There we met with Jeroen, Dian's friend, and his (Chinese) girlfriend and went for dinner. Afterwards we went to JZ Club; Shanghai's most famous Jazz bar, with a nice live band! I really started to feel better now so I decided to join them to see Shanghai's nightlife. We met up with Jeroen's collegue and roommate, his girlfriend and another Chinese girl that worked for them, and we went to club M2. It was good to go out again after one month of intensive travelling ;) But also interesting to see how the clubs here are; a lot of pretty Chinese girls, hitting on western guys, who therefore thought they were much cooler as they actually were... And now and then some Chinese girls with not too much clothes jumped on the bar to give a little dance-show. I'm not sure if all the bars here are like this, but it was interesting anyway. And compared to the jazz club there were a lot of Chinese people. A lot of rich Chinese people also; sitting by the tables where they got their private security guys.
Next day we decided to go to a hostel, so we moved our stuff and then the morning was already finished. We went to a modern art museum, that was indeed very modern and as I don't really understand modern art I'll just stay quiet about it ;) We walked around a bit in the nice little streets surrounding it, but I was exhausted. I realised that a month of non-stop travelling, after being already a bit tired when I started my journey, the agglomeration of mosquito-bites on my legs, the malaria pills and the no 1 travellers' disease (stomach-trouble), killed me a bit... So I decided to have a nice long sleep while Dian went to another night club and got home around 6h30...
Next day was our last day together, as Dian would get on the nighttrain to Beijing in the evening, to fly back home from there... But unfortunately my nice long sleep didn't really get me back to life; now I was really sick. So I stayed in bed all day... In the evening we went for our last dinner close to the hostel (after which I felt even worse) and then I waved Dian goodbye... Now I'm on my own...
Today I felt a bit better and I decided that I should make a report of my camera so that maybe I can get some money back from the travel insurance. Offcourse that took me all day... Luckily a really nice Chinese girl that works in the hostel helped me, and sacrificed her whole free day to translate for me! Chinese people are so nice and helpfull!

I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do the next days. I found an American guy that wants to join me to Hanzhou in two days, and untill then I think I'll just take it easy in Shanghai a bit... I'll try to put some pictures now, as far as I have them... :S I think my next message will be sooner, as I need to bother someone with all my stories now that Dian is gone ;)

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