Last Day in Shanghai - China. For those of you who lost our tracks, We have been exactly 4 months in China. We started our journey in Hong Kong 15/2/07 - chinese new year and made a clock wise (south - east - north and south again) circle. After 2.5 month we arrived to Shangahi - abit tired of trains, smoky busses and temples. We decided to settle down and practice our chinese - so we spent there 1.5 months. It is right, Shanghai is not like any other city in China. Without any special effort and a bit upgraded [View Full Entry]

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Lately we became interested in Bamboo. The Chinese use bamboo and its products a lot and we became curiose about where all these bamboo poles come from. We ask Xiu Xiu, the receptionist girl from our hostel where can we find bamboo products and factories, and she, excited, answered - oh, I am from bamboo city! It is called Anji - 4 hours from Shanghai (not mentioned in the lonely planet), a hilly area full of Bamboo forests and bamboo industry. Actually some parts of the movie “Namer Drakon” (“Crouching tiger hidden dragon”) were pictured there. So we took an [View Full Entry]

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see pictures below [View Full Entry]

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Traditional chinese gardens in Suzhou Asia » China » Jiangsu » Suzhou By Noa Amir May 22nd 2007 Noa & Amir So we took a one day trip to Suzhou. Left in the morning and came back to base at night. Suzhou is less than one hour from here, on a new fast fancy train. There were only first class tickets so it was even better. Suzhou is known for its chinese traditional gardens, and there are some water canals running through it. We began with a visit to the Humble administartor garden (the Audio guide said he was really stupid). Its a very nice [View Full Entry]

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Hi all, we are back on Air A bit tired of travelling and site seeing we arrived to Shanghai. Although Shangai development is based on humillation of the chinese by the west (mostlly in the 19-20 centries) - it has done the chinese nothing but good. We arrived on the first of May week - the labor day holiday. Dozens of millions of chinese are travelling around china during that week. we really tried to avoid walking in shangai's main attractions. After a week we moved to our current hostel - check the picture. its really nice and we spent [View Full Entry]

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AS you probably understand already - Shaolin temple is where the Kung fu (martial art) was born - and yes, it is kung and not kong... To arrive there we enjoyed a new fast luxtury train from Beijing (5h) and 2 hours bus which brought us to a nearby town (Denfeng). since we had not much inforamation on this town we had to spend the night in a bit expensive hotel and decide to stay there one more night... The temple area was full of tourists and we saw a Kung Fu show again, but this time we also saw [View Full Entry]

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13 days in Bejing. We are trying to figure out what we did here so many days while visiting mostly the must sites... The highlight is the tour to the wall. Not because of the wall (well it is amazing) but becasue of the company. we chose going with the "chinese cultural club"- a local club that organizes luctures and trips for foreigners here. we paid twice than the other tours for backpackers and got a fancy bus, very nice lunch and a guide that realy speaks english. But the company, ach the company: Leah and her sister from Canada [View Full Entry]

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NOT FOUND [View Full Entry]

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From Pingyao we took a night train to Pingyao - a very nice town - again surrounded with walls - this time really old, from the time of Ming dynesty (the ones with the agartalim from the movies) about 400 years ago. This is the area were the movie "red lanterns" was filmed. The town used to be in a rural area so it was not dammaged over the years. we stayed in a chinese style house, with intenral courtyard. We had a huge bed (2x3) made of bricks and mattress on top (typical to the town). A small woden [View Full Entry]

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Xian Asia » China » Shaanxi » Xi an By Noa Amir April 8th 2007 Noa & Amir Two buses and one pumpering flight brought us to Xian, known for the terra cotta warriers. We visited them- it was very impressive. We also visited a history museum with chinese exhibits from 4000bc to 1900. On another day we went to a neolitic village remains /museum (5000 bc) - very very interesting. Amir and shaked played there basketball with two chinese (4500bc) and got exhuasted after 5 minutes. Xian is a big modern city. we enjoyed resting in Starbucks coffee, but there were no other western [View Full Entry]

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