Hakka village, Liulian After the mountain climbing in Huang Shan Chris spotted a new destination for us on the map of China. Hakka villages with special tolou houses in South East China. So we took some adventurous train and bus rides to arrive to the middle of nowhere village of Liulian (I bet you wont find it on the map). The village is famous of the constructions by Hakka people, they built huge so-called tolou houses, where they could fit few hundred people. This tradition came from the era of the clans, where clans were living in close communities. In order [View Full Entry]

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Kinmen - Taiwan During our dinner discussions with Hiroshi he mentioned to us an interesting thing. Apparently there is a tiny island East of China which belongs to Taiwan. You can reach Kinmen Island by boat in 1 hour from Xiamen city.... yes, Chris got very excited of having a chance to collect an additional country stamp in his passport... and it did not take for him much time to convince me that a break in Taiwan would do good to us, so next day after our rise on the nice pig and duck wake-up call melodies we headed to east [View Full Entry]

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The Tail of the Dragon and the lovely road to get there... Salutations from the tropical island which is blessed with the poetical name of Hainan. After our cruelsome travels on the mainland of the Sleeping Dragon, we got the inspiration to visit what used to be called 'The tail of the Dragon', the island of Hainan. For centuries this island was considered as 'The entry to Hell' as hardly anything is here and the local inhabitants are still one of the poorest of China. Hoever the tide has changes and right now loads of charter planes fly in with in [View Full Entry]

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Dandong, Benxi, Dalian, Shanghai Got freedom back in China DANDONG After our nice but restricted trip in North Korea (NK) it was lovely to arrive to the other side of the Korean - Chinese border, namely the town of Dandong. We arrived by train from Pyongyang (pity that it was a Russian train and not a Korean one, but whatever... )and we spent the night and next day in Dandong. The two countries are separated by a river, half of the bridge is Korea, half is China. China made a real touristic site from the closedness of NK, you can buy [View Full Entry]

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Ok, next stop: Huangshan. For the tea connoisseurs Huangshan city is a place where you should have been. People around the world flock to this city for the local delicacies, which are growing on the lush green tea fields sloping on the hills. Illustrous teas like the following are grown here: Huang Shan Maofeng, which growns of altitudes of around 1000m and are bathed in the mist Qimen Hongcha, also known as Keemun black tea, the original main ingredient for the English Breakfast tea, before manufacturers substituted it with cheaper stuff. Taiping Houkui, also k [View Full Entry]

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North Korea ok it's way over time, but finally we've got some time and the facilities to do some bla-bla about North-Korea. (in the mean time we've been to Shanghai, Benxi and currently were at the 'base' of the yellow mountains, where we'll go tomorrow). So on the 24th of October we've took the plane to Pyongyong. But basically already on the 23rd espcially I got rather excited as we had a 2 hour briefing about North-Korea from the English tour-operator who had fixed this trip for us. Let's get some things straightened out immediately: 2 guides and 1 driver excorted [View Full Entry]

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Hi Dear Friends, sorry for the big silence, we haven't posted any entries for long... partially because of the trip to North Korea, but let us start with Beijing first! After the harsh weather in Mongolia we really longed for the high 10s or low 20s C in Beijing, which thankfully awaited for us there. OK, no fliplops weather, but we could get rid of the long john's, gloves, caps and fleece jackets... big difference. Spent 6 days in Beijing, and enjoyed it a lot. It's a buzzing city with noise, traffic and lots of smells, so different to the Mongolian [View Full Entry]

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Mongolia - Ger to Ger trip Hi Friends, already in Beijing, but now we have time to give you some more details on Mongolia. We spent there 1 week which was way too short... but as there are trains only 3 times a week from UB to Beijing, and we have an appointment in Beijing on 23 Oct, we had to leave. We spent the one week in the Mongolian countryside in an organised tour where more or less the two of us were the group :o) We left UB by bus to somewhere in the West where a nice [View Full Entry]

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Hey All, we still owe you with some pictures from the Baikal Lake as that posting went without photos... sorry. So here you go, enjoy! Greets, C&A [View Full Entry]

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Hello again, now from Beijing. Apparently this site is not blocked, but facebook is.... But ok, this posting should have been done in Ulaanbaatar (UB) - Mongolia, but this didn't happen due to a lack of time. So this posting is just a copy-paste from a e-mail draft that lingered in Agi's mail box for ~2 weeks.... Enjoy. Ulaan Ude - Ulaanbaatar After 13 hours on the bus we arrived to UB yesterday at local time 7.30 pm. The trip was OK except for the border crossing which took 3.5 hours. I love the European Union, just so easy. Here the [View Full Entry]

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