room 215 on the top of the moon

now the rest I wont tell that detailed, I figured its too much...
... so on Saturday we hooked up with all the new people who had moved into our dorm over the last day and night: there was JuanPablo from Chile, Jitin from India and Emma from Beijing, so together we rented some mountainbikes and made our way out of the city... and into the pure nature... oh that was so nice! after a while we left Emma (sorry hun) and the main street and cycled on a rocky kinda country street... with huge-dust-cloud-causing-trucks-which-transport-the-bamboo-boats passing by (if you can see it on the pic, look at the 'motor'!!), and other than that only a few motor bikes etc.... again I felt like being thrown into the middle of some piece of art, this scenery is just so beautiful. After about 4 hours or so we arrived at Moon Hill, south of YangShuo. The hill is known for its shape, as it has a hole in - guess what - the shape of the moon, and thanks to the creativeness of Chinese it has such a great name now ;).
We payed 1,5 € admission, including having our bikes "watched" :S and set off the 1251 steps (according to LP again - so nothin's for sure) up the hill... it was quite a climb, but with several stops we arrived, actually I had expected it to be harder. Well, we had arrived at the hole, so we were in the moon kind of. And the view was beautiful!
But then we went on... getting to kindof another rocky cliff from where we could see Moon Hill from its side... the view was even better... we took a little break and watched the free-climbers on the hill climb and fall... and just enjoyed the view... but could it get any nicer?
oh yeah, and I am still amazed! After that stopp, we went on to climb ontop of Moon Hill, and with ONTOP I mean ontop, there was practically no single stone that was any higher than the one we were standing on. Unbelievable. And (god knows why) we were the only ones up there... Room 215 on top of the Moon... with a 360° view all around the area, weirdly shaped mountains and valleys with the river, streams ans towns inbetween... just gorgeous! It must have been the most gorgeous view ever! Definately one of the highlights of my time in Asia so far.
Unfortunatly, we had to go back as long as there was a little light - obviously the rest of Yanghuos population had the same idea and so we hit the bikers rush hour kinda... but was fun.
In the evening we had a good dinner alltogether, and also with our new roommate Lucile from France,... we tried the local specialty Pijiou Yu (Beer Fish)... but it sounds much better than it actually tastes, but luckily we had some other goood stuff... (yummy fried eggplant again :D etc. ) as well... ... while walking though town by the way, we met - again - our Chinese fellow from the boat! ... lateron we brought some 0,80cents beer bottles up to our room and had just a real good night! while us girls went sleeping around 2... the guys couldnt find an end and went out to find the last open bars... no problem that we had to get up at 6.. ;)

oh yeah.. 6AM... urghhhh.... but we wanted to make our way to Ping'an in the mountains NORTH of Guilin that day... so that meant: bus from YangShuo to Guilin - 2 hours, bus from Guilin to LongShen - 3 hours and bus from LongSheng to Ping'an- another hour. so we arrived at 2 up there after a bumpy but funny ride with great view over the mountainous area with rice fields and smalltown life to watch. The area reminded, don't laugh, seriously a lot of the German Black Forrest... up in Ping'an we walked up *few* more steps as the town has no streets... and checked into 'countryside Cafe & Inn' a totally cute little wooden house, and if it wasnt for the chinese style roof and the red lanterns hanging around, it could have seriously been in the Black Forest. Our room was totally made of raw wooden walls and ceiling... felt like Heidi in the mountain haha!! We took a break, had a good meal of which I still dont know what I ate (looked like small branches from a tree, but cooked and soft) and then hiked up to a viewpoint to enjoy the postcard like view over the rice teracces. Now this must have been the most beautiful view ever! (did I say that before ? hmmm)

Next day was already time to leave... but even though we had enjoyed a good evening with a bottle of chinese red wine for Verena and me... we got up early to hike to another peak. The view was just as good as the day before. Up there we got some postcards to send around... and while writing them... guess who we met? oh yeah.. our Chinese shadow from the boat!
We stayed up there for a while and then made our way back to town - by the way did I mention that this town had no more than maybe 20 all wooden houses, no streets, thus no cars, just some donkeys? it was so idyllic... and felt like set back to some centuries ago... anyways, reality caught us when we got on the bus for the bumpy ride down... then switched to another bus to take us to guilin. Well this bus misteriously should have taken about 4 hours. But even though we stopped several times to let people, ducks and chicken enter or leave and we stopped for about a half an hour because the motor broke down and driver/-mechanic-to-be had to fix it... we made it to Guilin within around 2,5 hours only... so we had more time there for some extra shopping. I got some chinese music and a new pyjama :D ... then we had to say our goodbyes to Verena - as she had to work tomorrow she was flying back home, and we hit the train, surely after buying some beer and snacks for the ride...

... entering the train... passing by the compartments (and of course our Chinese haunter) ....

... we arrived the next day - Tuesday - at 1 in Shenzhen... walked from the station to the border... where we met: oh no... not the Chinese guy!! but our friend JuanPablo.. yes its a small world... he had made it there by bus from YangShuo.

To enjoy being back in HongKong kind of Western civilisation we headed for the nearest McDonalds in Kowloon Tong.. and then made it home.

Seriously, this was, besides Beijing and Shanghai and Hangzhou and Anji and Hong Kong the best time in China so far!!

GuLin - YangShuo - LongSheng - Ping'An ....

So, it took me a while but now here's the rest of the trip to China:
Sleeeeping in and then a nice shower... well... kinda nice... the water was hot but there was no pressure in the pipe... so anyways... After buying our train tickets to go back to Hong Kong, which was surprisingly quick and easy (in Chinese terms that is) and took us only about a half an hour, we went through tha city in search for some breakfast... that turned out a little harder so in the end we made it lunch... so yummy- finnally back to real good chinese food that I've missed so much in Hong Kong! fried tomato with egg, fried potato slices, ... so good! Then we visited the 'Solitary Beauty Peak' and the surrounding palace. 'few' steps took us up the hill and up there we enjoyed a nice view over the city. The palace around it was nice, but after visiting all those numerous palaces in Beijing and Shanghai, it was just another palace for me. But of course this one was expecially great cuz it was built by the nephew of an emporer of the Qing dynasty... that sounds good doesnt it?! well... I doubt it. Anyways afterwars we walked all the way through the city on the way back to the hostel, hitting every single one of a few kilometers of sports shop which logos and names obviously faking Nike, Addidas or other brandnames. I got new fake but 'high quailty' t-shirt in the shop next to the shop which sold 'haiii quaity bag -is fake Plada (Prada) but is veely guud fake' ;) ... then I got some shoes yippiee.. new flip floppy kinda sandals... it must be a good day!! in the middle of the city we then found that the Chinese dont only fake the stuff tehy sell.. they even fake some sights! What? oh yesss... the one and only Louvre is where? no no no... dont think its Paris, cuz it is most definately in GuiLin - with some beautiful Pagodas and an ancient park just around the corner! nicccce!!
In the evening Verena joined us back at the hostel... and over some Card-drinking games we emptied the Hostels inventory of Bayleys and were *forced* to proceed with our ol' buddy Jack Daniels...

Next day started early, cause our boad from Guilin to Yangshuo was supposed to leave at 10... or at least the bus to take us from the travel-agency-shack/garage of our trust to the peer. Well... the tour was delayed by just an hour, obviously the river was tooo foggy for the boat to go... then the 'bus' (learned how to fit 8 people in a 5 seater 'bus') took us to the overly beautiful old town in the middle of nowhere (of course THE place to be)... were we had the one-time-opportunity to buy the most beautiful and unique, handmade, original fake artefacts ever seen for the best-discounted ripp-off-prices(because we are such good friends of the seller and *store*owner). Well, it actually wasnt so bad, really not.. I mean we just walked though the town watched the people and didnt buy anything.. but well.. then we finally left for the pier. Arriving, our 'tour guide' announced that he was hungry and so he treated us for some fried rice. nice of him! then we started out boat tour down the Li Jiang river and it was truely amazing. The mountains there just look so bizarre... they are mostly of limestone (Kalk) and have gotten their form through erosion throughout the last centuries. The most special mountains were of course pointed out to us by our only-chinese-speaking 'captain'... we passed by mountains with the creative names of 'five-tigers-catch-a-goat', 'an-old-man-push-a-mill', 'five-fingers-hill', 'apple-hill' and so further... of course the opposite hill then has the name 'old-man-watching-five-tigers-catch-a-goat-hill' or so... and obviously each single mountains has a legendary love story behind it - yes thats China!! We enjoyed the relaxing boat tour, took tooo many picturs of mountains which will now look all the same, but it was just so impressive, hard to find words of it again. stopping at a kind of stony-beach-shore locals were offering their special original fake handicrafts again. The waterbuffalos we passed didnt even acknowledge our boat with the blink of an eye... and somehow I felt like moved back centuries in time.
After teh boat dropped us of in Xingping we took the bus into the sunset... to Yanhshuo. The bus took us through scenic scenary (duh!) and fields of rice and grain as far as you can see... with just some mountains, waterbuffalos and small chinese villages with breaking-down-shacky-style houses in between, it all just seemed like traveling through a piece of art.
Arriving in Yanghshuo we checked into LP-recommended HI-Hostel - a good decision, as our 9-bed dorm was empty besides us and had a 'private' bathroom with a REAL toilet *luxury feeling*. Well throughout the night we should notice that the matrasses were of the uhm... old-overused-extra-'soft'-foam-on-wood kind. but it was ok.
Yangshuo is called the backpackers paradise, and that is for a reason! West-street is filled with bars, souvenier and all kinda other stuff shops, restaurants and everything the typicall tourists want. And guess what, while I usually hate such stuff, there for some reason it didn't even put me off. I guess I just switched of my 'I-hate-touristy-places' mind for a while and accepted that the locals sell of their culture there. After days of Chines food, being in such a place of course we treated ourselves to some real pizza... oh god that was so good! I am getting hungry again just writing this! Afterward some rice wine (throat-desinfecting 50% alc.) we hit another bar. Making friends with some chinese guys we let them buy us loads of beer and play the typical dice-game again... surely all of us having a blast. And that was just the first day in Yangshuo...

--> HongKong - Shenzhen - Guilin... trip day 0

after a busy beginning of last week, full of uni stuff and preparations for the next trip to China, finally it was Wednesday afternoon, and that meant the trip could finally start.

The start however was a bit confusing - complicated - whatever. I was supposed to meet up with David and Markus at the Kowloon Tong KCR Station Platform. That already turned out a little hard... as there were few more people willing to take just this exact train... anyways... we didnt find each other and decided over the phone to take the approaching train and meet up at the border station of LoWu. That all working out fine, we crossed the border without further complications and at 6PM we hit the Airport bus, which supposedly would take around 40 minutes, giving us another hour or so to catch the plane... no prob. - wasn't it for the *SLIGHT* traffic congestion of Shenzhen. argghhh... at 7 we start wondering and getting slightly nervous... at 7:10, we can still not see the glimpse of an airport, nor a plane landing or taking of anywhere skywide... hmm... 7:20, arrival at the airport - 30 min. til takeoff.. so yeah I guess we did well running from Terminal A (where the bus stopped) through all the way to terminal B (where we had to pick up our E-tickets (which were printed on paper- thats why they call'em E-tickets- and then back to terminal A where the check in gate was.... to find it already closed. so we jumped the queue of the next door check in counter... showing the lady the tickets and when she saw them she hurried to accelerate the proceedings...no questions of any kind... and within a minute we had our boarding passes, turned around and ran to security... standing in lind seemed endless (3 minutes or so) and already we could run on to Gate 14..... which we reached at 7:40PM - still 10 minutes before take off.... puhhh... ...but why is our flight not displayed on the screen or over the gate? *worry* *ask* *relieve* ahh.... its delayed by a half an hour and moved to Gate 15... puhhhhh....
other than that, the flight was quite normal and we landed in Guilin (Guanxi province - Southwest China) around 10 pm... took a bus to the city centre and found the hostel, a really cute place.

but besides actually making the flight and staying in this nice hostel, one of the great features of the day was: the air. You would not believe our pleasure when we stepped out of the plane (an Airbus A320 by the way *G*) down the stairs of the gangway and actually breathed in fresh and cool air... as if it was a limited good catching a deeeeeep breath after another. It is unbelievable how much you can appreciate cool air, which does not actually come out of the aircon!!

at the hostel, we throw our stuff into our room and go back downstairs to the cozy bar/lounge area to enjoy a cool beer for a mere 0,80 € / 600ml! :) ... then we meet... surprise surprise.... small world, another germyn guy *forgot-tha-name* who studies at Baptist University of HongKong together with Verenas Ex. After chatting for a while Markus David and I challenged us for some billiards... and had... together with some furhter beers... quite some fun. heel gezellig!!

so here we go - as promised, I am writing more often - and last time was yesterday!! Today I went hiking, what I wanted to do basically all the time since I got here... but first it was too hot... then we were away... then we were too busy... like it is, it took us 2 months to go hiking for the first time... and then it was a day full of so much trouble and yet so much fun and just great!!

Mandy (Asian-British), Ahong (Asian-Dutch guy), Zhung Nan (Chinese girl) and I met quite early at the hall.. then met Verena (German) at the Sha Tin station.. no problem so far... but it just took - like everything in Hong Kong - ages... and while we waited for Ahong's buddy Wanice (Hong Kong local girl) we tried to figure out where we were going to hike, cuz actually we were not quite prepared - that meaning we didnt have a clue of where to go, how to get there, how long we wanted to go, how hard it would be, we also didnt really consider bringing enough water and stuff... but anyways... finally... around 12 (!) we arrived in Kei Ling Ha Lo Wai (eastern New Territories) where we entered the MacLehose trail. Having *organisation-experts-combine-their-talents* taken a good look at the map there we decided to hike towards the East to end either in Pak Tam Au or in Long Ke. The beginning was nice, not too easy not to hard... and we made our way throug this gorgeous area... noticing ( after about 2 hrs. ) that we were kind of running out of water... and just had like about 6 hrs. ahead of us. so, any problem? :S
and the hike got harder and harder... I'm telling you, this was like torture for some parts, not joking here! we basically hiked from somewhat like sea-level all the way up to the 702m high 'Ma On Shan' mountain through the rainforest-like forest in the heat of the afternoon (now it is 8:45pm and it is still 26°C) puhhhhh... no water... and then we were kind of a little exhausted... and considered for the first time, where we would actually be able to leave this trail... which seemed to be endless. It was somewhere around that point were I figured out that we were walking in the other direction than planned... since only like 3 hrs then - and the next exit was another long way ahead. but what could we do? just keep on walkin' right?
We made it to the peak about half an hour later and had the most gorgeous view (so far) over Sai Kung bay to the south and to the north to Kei Ling Ha Hoei bay. wow that was so great. From there on it was a little easier.. rather going down than up and being a little cooler up there as well made it just so much nicer. We enjoyed the walk and watching the paragliders, getting jealous at everything they might see...
then we walked around Pyramid hill and walked on the rim of a few more hills. I had seriously always thought a trail like this existed only on TV - well obviously not.
Walking on adoring the landscape and taking too many pics again we came across a bunch of people who were doing paragliding on that grassy Slope there... and - people might call it nosy - I call it curious - I went up to them to ask whether it was possible to book a flight like this or if they did it privatly. Answer was totally unexpected and surprising: "no ui do ite priiivatli, du iuu want a ride?" French people asking me whether I want a ride on a parachute? uhhh... I am speachless! no wait, I am not - YESSSSS!!! if it is no problem! of course!!
So there I was - five minutes later, with some gear on my back, a helmet atop of me and wondering how much experience these guys might have with this stuff... but anyways who cares right?
Damn it that was SO COOL! Unbelievable undescribable... just wow! after some starting problems - this is not as easy as it looks - we took off. We being Thomas from Paris and me on the same parachute. I dont find words for the view, just look yourself - even though it doesnt work to put the movie into this blog, here is the youTube link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzmwChzZUyc

anyways, it was only a 15 minute flight but it was definately one of the best things I have done so far in Hong Kong!

and as I just heard, some people dont know that the old picture page is full... so some pics are on a new page. the old one was: www.claudia-schmitz.medion-fotoalbum.com, the new one www.claudia-schmitz1.medion-fotoalbum.com. since this is also full now... the latest page is www.claudia-schmitz2.medion-fotoalbum.com!!

the last days...

hey guys... just few words on the last days here and tonight!
since I wrote last time, I dont know exactly what all happened but it was loads and so just some stuff that comes to my mind now!
First of all - I know - how awful - I am thinking about food first - unbelievable! Well, but this was special! the StudiVZ group and I went to a great dinner together: we went to the "Biergarten" (beergarden), which is - for the non Germans, a VERY typical german thing! however, here it is not an actual beer garden, just a restaurant. but still great as it offers real Bitburger beer from the tap and they serve real german food... so I had Frikadellen with Kartoffelsalat (German meatballs with potato salad--> sounds so bad in English, doenst it?), and the guys (typical Schwaben) were happy with their Käsespätzle and Wurstsalat! yummmy
another night we went for an indian dinner which was also great... anyways
what else happened?
uni stuff... becuase I am sure due to my reports you guys must all think I am just lazy here... doing nothing but partying and traveling? and that is SO TRUE! but I squeeze in some time for uni.. and lately I had to do more and more since I really gotta at least pass my classes here...
two weeks ago I had my first exam: Chinese!! uhh uhh... I was quite scared... the pronunciation is so hard and even though I learned all the vocabulary I still can sometimes not distinguish teh difference between a x and a q and the zh and ch sounds... but well, the exam went good in perfect cooperation with Julia and we both did really quite well *surprise-surprise*
and I had to hand in an ugly essay about the influence of gambling on residents of Macau with all the ethical stuff in it... yuck... so annoying to write... but well,.. I got a B+ Yippiieeee.. and since I worked for a D I am overly happy with that!
Well, thats not the end yet. just handed in another assignment today and the projects are going on.
we went on a fieldtrip to Sai Kung in the north-eastern part of HongKong which was really very nice and interessting.
and between all that? well.... some parties of course and: more travel plans... so next week I will actually go to guilin with David and Markus! We'll (hopefully) make it there on Wednesday and return to HK the Tuesday after. And no, I have no holiday but I take it ;)
and then finally about today: Sara, Christina, Suzanne, Julia, Laura and I were invited to a hot pot evening at Queenies house, she is also German but lives here at her grannys place. That was so cool. and yummy... and I am still stuffed!! It was just great to see a real Hong Kong home and be there and we did have a lot of fun. Singing all the way back on the bus I guess we must have done everything possible to establish a judgement of weird foreigners in the other people on the bus... and the driver... but well... it was fun.
Tomorrow I will *sportive* go hiking in the New territorries. I mean, its not that we had a lot of experience hiking or that we would have a hiking map with the trails... but we will just make our way!! ;) so now I gotta go to bed! c ya all...