New York – Escaping Sandy

First of all I want to take the opportunity to say that I’m back in Sweden safe and sound and I’m really sad to see on the news what is happening in New York and on the east coast. I wish all the best to the people there, stay safe!

On my last days in New York City I made sure the visit the museums that I had planned to see. That included the popular Museum of Modern Art, that had been pretty crowded last time I passed, so I had decided to skip it that day. On Friday afternoon the museum is free to enter, but knowing that I like to take my time, I was decided to be safe rather than sorry and went in the morning, and I’m glad I did, since the line to enter the museum was huge when I left. It was at the MoMA that I sadly found out that one of my favorite contemporary artists had passed away, two years ago, Louise Burgeois, known for her big spider sculptures that we saw in South Korea and Japan.

I was happy to see works by several artists that I like, for example two small works by Frida Kahlo and the notorious Punch and Judy by Bruce Nauman. While I was at the museum I started to feel very tired and cold, by the time I got back to my hotel I was sure I was getting a cold, so I decided to stay in and rest so I wouldn’t get worse.

On my last day in town, I went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. I had read in my guide book that it featured a “cutting-edge feminist arts center”, something I found very intriguing and right down my alley.

When I studied art history, I read about this work by Judy Chicago called The Dinner Party, and although I found it interesting it wasn’t something that had very much caught my attention. However, seeing it in real life, makes the whole difference, and I feel like my pictures truly don’t make it justice. This large installation features place settings for 39 famous women and was created by Judy Chicago together with a large group of volunteers. The goal was to “end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record.” Each place setting consists of an runner embroidered with the persons name and a plate, both containing symbols relating to her accomplishments. It’s a fantastic work to see and I was happy to see the names of several people that I myself admire, like the poet Sappho, the painter Artemisia Gentileschi and the mathematician Hypatia.

There was a temporary exhibition with works by Mickalene Thomas that I really liked, her works are often large collages where she re-stages themes and symbolism taken from traditional Western art. In this work she makes a reference to the famous 1866 painting L’Origine du Monde, an infamous erotic painting by the French artist Gustave Courbet.

 

In this work, Le déjeuner sur l’herbe: les trois femmes noires, she refers to the 1863 painting by Édouard Manet Déjeuner sur l’herbe, one that I remember clearly from my art history class, since I found the contrast between the nude women and the well-dressed men a bit disturbing.

On my last evening, Halloween, Gabriele from couchsurfing and I went out for a small pub crawl, our first stop was this famous bar called Old King Cole where they supposedly make great Bloody Marys. Of course, I persuaded him that we should order one each, then I remembered that last time I had had a Bloody Mary (about 10 years ago) I was wasted and at the first sip of my drink, I remembered that I don’t like Bloody Marys. I only had about 1/3 of my drink while Gabriele did drink all of his pizza-tasting-drink, as he put it.

After a fantastic 10 days in New York, I woke up on Sunday to the news that a storm was coming to the city. I, who had my flight home at 19:30, was a bit worried that I would not be able to leave before Sandy arrived. In the hotel they assured me that flights would be leaving that day, so I headed to the airport and it was chaos. I managed to get on my plane, one of the last ones leaving New York City, since they closed the airport at 22:00.

New York – Get Your Culture On

I’m going to break it to you, I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to the arts, and, I generally don’t like musicals. I’ve seen quite a few of them. Growing up, I used to go to the theater together with my mother and sisters, we got to each choose one thing we would see together, and when it wasn’t my turn to choose, we usually saw musicals. Still, being that I’m staying less than a block from Broadway, I thought I should give it a try, if not Broadway is more famous than the Gothenburg Opera. So I got together with another couchsurfer, Gabriele from Italy, and we went to see Mamma Mia! Although I did laugh and had a good time, I must say, from an artistic perspective I wasn’t impressed. The singers had good voices, sure, but there was this “fast food”-feel to it, you get in, they sing, quickly and without much ceremony and then we barely had time to clap before we were out again.

One of the great things about traveling to big cities like New York, is that there is a lot of art and architecture to take part of. I went to the Guggenheim Museum which is one of the buildings I’ve been wanting to see since I first saw a picture of it about 15 years ago. I’m sure I’m not the only one that likes Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed the museum, and I could easily say that he is my favorite architect. There was a pretty nice exhibition with works of Pablo Picasso called “Black and White”.

In the evening, I had made plans together with some other couchsurfers to meet up to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge and then go for food or a drink. Since we are all tourists, there was some confusion about where we were going to meet. Several of us walked around the area for more than half an hour. I wasn’t feeling like just going back to the hotel, so I decided to wait by the bridge and hoped to eventually meet someone that looked like a couchsurfer (how one can figure that out just by looking at someone beats me). Luckily, 3 of us managed to find each other! I guess by looking as confused as possible

On Wednesday I took on the task of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Again, I had made plans to meet some couchsurfers, but I overslept so I was on my own. I think it was for the best, one of the perks about traveling alone is that you get to do things your own way and at your own pace and since I’m very interested in art and know exactly what I want to see , it can be more of a bother to go with someone else. I ended up spending the whole day at the Met, and when they closed, I still hadn’t seen everything I wanted to see.

After paying the recommended fee of 25 dollars I went to get an audio-guide, which costs another 7 dollars. I wasn’t very happy about that and felt a bit stupid that I had payed the full amount if they were going to charge me extra for the audio guide, so I decided to skip it. Lucky for me though, just when I was going in to the museum a woman asked me if I wanted to have her guide since she was already leaving.

The great thing about visiting the Met is that they have a great collection of paintings, including many that I’ve read about while studying art history. Although they didn’t have my favorite paintings by the Italian baroque painter, Artemisia Gentileschi, like her self-portraits or her Judith and Holofernes series, I was happy to see one of her paintings, Esther before Ahasuerus, which is again an unusual depiction of a strong woman, which I very much appreciate.

The day was not long enough for me to get to see everything I wanted to see, and this post is not long enough to display all the pictures of the fantastic art I got to see. I guess you will all have to come to New York and see it for yourselves

The next day I went for a run in Cenral Park. I decided to just run north for a half an hour and then turn and just run south. Instead I got lost, but had a pretty nice run and managed to find my way out again, after a while.

I met up with Gabriele for lunch at the Grand Central Terminal, which was, well, pretty grand.

Some elements weren’t so grand though.

There is something with carousels here in USA, or maybe it’s New York, but I haven’t been to a park without one. This one features the Headless hunter, Halloween is here

Since we were passing by, we decided to check out the New York Library. There is something very exaggerated and exuberant about these buildings, that fascinates me.

The library is just amazing indoors, and inspiring, I can’t imagine how it must feel to sit there and study. Maybe I should come to New York and take a course or something, only so I can sit here and study for my exams.

After dinner, we went to Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, at the Lincoln Center, for some jazz and a great view of the city. The atmosphere was great, the drinks good, and the music fantastic.

After the main band, people took turns to play all the different instruments and sing. A large amount of jazz players passed the stage, this guy had an fantastic dreamy voice.

Moscow – Meanwhile in Москва

While my wife is enjoying her vacation in New York, I went on a business trip to Moscow. Getting a Russian visa and cat-sitter on short notice is quite stressful, but eventually I got here.

Found the Yandex office, despite them spelling their name with Cyrillic letters. For the very same reason I had a bit difficulties finding my taxi at the airport. Luckily Russians are friendly and several people tried to help me.

My first taste of Russian cuisine in the Yandex canteen, with two of our hosts on the left and my coworker on the right.

We tried to squeeze in a little tourism in our work schedule (which was 12 to 20-ish) and took a morning walk to see the nearby Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Rain mixed with a bit of snow was hard on our hands and made photography difficult. The cathedral is only 15 years old so it’s hardly a historical building but the sheer size is quite impressive.

Behind the cathedral there was a very short parade; it started where the rightmost group currently is standing and they went about the same distance to the other side of the statue before turning around. Couldn’t figure out if they were from the military or the police.

Churches topped with shiny domes were everywhere, here is one we spotted through a narrow gap between two houses while hurrying back to the warmth of the hotel.

The rumours of Russians’ love of vodka seemed exaggerated, at least among software developers, but when our Yandex hosts took us to a Russian wilderness-themed restaurant we got to try some.

The side dishes included thin sliced frozen raw deer meat (center) and fish (eaten) that you would dip in salt or soy sauce. It was delicious and went very well with the vodka.

Since the restaurant was close to the Red Square my coworker and I decided to to walk there and admire the picturesque St. Basil’s Cathedral.

Also on the square, in front of the Kremlin’s wall, is Lenin’s tomb which is dwarfed by the extravagant buildings on all sides.

It wasn’t that far to our hotel from here so we started walking in a direction that felt somewhat right, and after about an hour we arrived there freezing. Now having finished the working part of our trip we were looking forward to a Saturday of intense sightseeing before flying home, if only we would have some luck with the weather…

New York – It’s All About the Signs

It’s been over a year since we got back home from our around-the-world trip and to be honest, we haven’t been very interested in traveling, for a while. But now, I’m back on the road. I’m not sure if I’ve forgotten how to do it, or if I was just stressed, but on this trip I forgot to bring several essentials that we had good use for in the around-the-world trip. Like duck tape to tape the blinking lights in my hotel room that don’t let me sleep at night, or my sleep mask that would have solved the problem just as well. Maybe it’s just that one gets more relaxed when packing for 10 days rather than 258.

So I arrived in New York City on a humid and hot evening and fell asleep directly when I arrived at the hotel. The next day, jet lagged and hungry I hit the town, and since I’m staying in Midtown, it wasn’t very far. It rained the whole day, and I got soaked even walking around with an umbrella. So I decided to hide at the International Center of Photography that was having a very interesting exhibition called The Rise and Fall of Apartheid. The day got cut short when I decided to head back to the hotel to change clothes, and fell asleep without dinner.

To say the least, I was very hungry the next morning, but I still didn’t manage to eat everything on my plate. Although the portions are smaller than I remember them from when I was in USA 15 years ago. While I was looking forward to eating a lot of unhealthy food, like bacon, eggs, pancakes, donuts, bagels and all the other things I’ve missed, now that I’m here I just don’t seem to manage to eat all that fat and sweets.

The weather was great, and since I got up very early I decided to take a long walk. I considered standing in line at Tkts to buy discounted Broadway tickets, but all the tourists everywhere made me think again.

I walked to Chelsea to see what was being shown at the galleries in the area, amongst others I got to see work by Linda Stojak and Beth Cavener Stichter that I really liked. I must admit, that I haven’t planned my trip as much as I usually do, but sometimes you just bump into things that are very interesting. I saw a lot of people heading up some metal stairs in the are and that is how I found the High Line, which is very nice for a stroll.

Next, I headed towards Washington Square Park and got to enjoy live music…

live sports…

and a demonstration.

After that I headed to have some lunch where I found myself sitting next to a guy from San Francisco that was in town visiting some friends and we started talking. Now that I think about it, I’ve been talking to a lot of different people, I’m so impressed how easy it is for people to strike up a conversation with strangers. In general, I find people here to be very friendly, and really it was a long time ago that I felt that I blended in so well somewhere.

On Sunday I planned to head Uptown, my first stop was the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine which was quite impressive, I specially liked the “Poets Corner”, an homage to American poets like Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and Edgar Allan Poe. Well inside, the Sunday service was about to start, and being a curious atheist I decided to sit it out.

After the service, well, actually, I left after the sermon, I headed north, to Harlem. The streets were bustling with people and the weather was great. I stopped by the famous Apollo Theater, but well, it being lunch time and the theater being closed, I had to settle for some pictures of the signs with the stars names on them.

The absolute highlight of my day was visiting the Studio Museum which had a fantastic exhibition with artists such as Njideka Akunyili, Meleko Mokgosi and Xaviera Simmons. I was blown away by the art, the atmosphere and the great museum shop they have. Of course, you were not allowed to take any photographs so I don’t have much to show.

For dinner, I headed to the Red Rooster, a restaurant I had heard much about, and the place delivered, to say the least. The atmosphere was great and I got seated where I had a perfect view of the band that was playing. It wasn’t that I was home sick or anything, but since their specialty is Swedish food, I went for the meatballs, which were the best I’ve had, in a long time. Oh, and since I heard that when you are in New York you have to drink drinks, and not beer or wine, that is exactly what I did

The band was great, so I decided to stay and listen to them, and I must say that the camera captured my exact feeling after having two of those delicious drinks.

Day 244 – The End

As it turns out we ran out of money, so we are going home. Instead of 258 days we only made it up to 244, but what a journey!

To everybody that we’ve met along the way, we want to thank you for making our travels so much more fun. We wish you all continued good journeys and we hope to see you again sometime, somewhere in the world.

To all our readers we want to thank you for following us, we have been so happy to read your comments and encouragements, we hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as us.

If we don’t get stuck at Heathrow we should be back home soon

Day 243 – Asia’s Top Eight

Previously our only first-hand knowledge about Asia was from travelling in Japan, little did we imagine how full of variation the continent is. After 3 months we still realize we’ve only seen but a portion of it and will sure return for more. For people coming from the Europe-centric part of the world, as ourselves, it was actually very refreshing to see places so detached from what we otherwise think is the center of the world.

08 – The Terracotta Army 

The immense detail and beauty of this amazing collection of statues surely make up for the hordes of tourists one has to fight to see them. A must when visiting Xi’an, China.

07 - Suwon’s Ancient Walls

There was something about these ancient walls of South Korea that made us romanticize about forlorn times of honor and greatness

06 - Beijing And The Qing Dynasty’s Heritage

The capital of China has some real treats to offer, most of which can be attributed to the Qing dynasty. The Great Wall, the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven are all fantastic sights, all accessible from this bustling city..

05 - Thailand’s Beaches

It might sound like a cliché, but who can resist the charm of beautiful soft sand, turquoise water, colorful fishes, friendly people and good food? We chose a spot on Koh Phangan which didn’t disappoint us.

04 – Monkeys And Hot Springs

We’ve seen many monkeys and they remain one of our favourite animals. If there is a place that not only has wild monkeys but also hot springs, it will definitely be one of our tops picks of any trip. Believe it or not, it is not difficult to find a place like that in Japan, but Beppu sure was easy to like.

03 – Buddhist Temple Stay

Probably one of the most personally rewarding experiences from our travels, staying for 2 nights at Golgul-sa near Gyoengju, South Korea. It was fun, insightful, exhausting and painful.

02 – Chengdu’s Pandas

They are adorable, even more than one can ever imagine and as the animal lovers that we are, completely irresistible. Chengdu, China, is a nice enough place to be in anyhow, but the pandas are amazing.

01 – Tokyo And Sumo Wrestling Live

Probably our favourite city on the planet, we are big fans of Japan, and this was our 3rd visit to this versatile city. I mean, can anyone tell me of a place were you can get a cat café, robots, electronics, manga, delicious food, crazy fashion, ancient culture, friendly people and on top of that, this time we got to watch sumo wrestling live! We will surely be back.

Day 242 – A Vacation From The Vacation

Having been on the road for over 200 days and starting to get a bit weary, our plan for Thailand was to simply find a nice beach and relax for the two weeks we had left.

After waking up on the train and arriving in Surat Thani, we spent a few hours on a bus and got on the “express” boat to Ko Phangan (aka. Koh Pha Ngan). With the sun shining, turquoise water and green islands the vacation mood begun to kick in.

Having looked around on the net and thumbed through an old Lonely Planet, we picked a beach called Mae Had and decided to spend our first two nights in a cabana at the Royal Orchid – the cheapest place on the beach that had a home page!

The only disadvantage was that it was located on the eastern part of Mae Had, which has nice sand for sunbathing but it was muddy, rocky and a bit dirty in the water. It was also full of fishermen’s boats that would get stranded daily at low tide. Luckily the west beach was no more than a 3-minute-walk away.

Now this is what we came for! The island has a narrow sand bank connecting it to the mainland and dividing Mae Had into the east and west parts. During high tide it would submerge (the connection, not the entire island!) but you could still wade over if you wanted to. One morning we walked over and explored the deserted resort, but it wasn’t that exciting.

A beach dog who looked like a pitbull taking a rest in the shadow. There were quite a few stray dogs every where. They walked around a lot, but it seemed like they had their favourite areas to stay in. Some were a bit shy while they still wanted to be near humans, so they would often come and lie 1-2 meters away from you. Others seemed more affectionate and came closer so you could pet them.

Mae Had is supposed to be one of the best snorkelling places in the area, yet I was a little bit disappointed. I guess it’s not the optimal time of the year, visibility was decent only one day and ranged from quite bad to very bad all the other days.

Pretty much all the coral are dead, possibly from an overabundance of snorkellers and divers – many not knowing or just not caring that you damage the corals by wearing shoes and walking on them – or perhaps killed by global warming. But there was a fair amount of fishes to look at.

These fish weren’t shy at all and followed me around, while others (not pictured) fled the second I pointed the camera at them.

A pair of giant clams.

Some of the few colourful things I saw.

One of the bottom-dwelling fishes used its fins like limbs to move around on the ground. I think it looks like it has the potential to evolve into crawling up on dry land! Well, it would probably get eaten by a dog if it tried to, now that we already have land animals.

These photos aren’t representative of the snorkelling at Ko Phangan (at this time of the year), and I think all of them were taken on 2 or 3 days out of the 11 we spent at this beach. In 90% of the time you would just swim around looking at sand or rocks.

The happy snorkellers! This day there were big waves and visibility less than 2 meters, but at least the weather was nice above the surface!

Some coral that has been washed up on the shore.

We had lots of great Thai food at the local restaurant. The cabana was cheaper, staff friendlier and food tastier compared to the similar resort on the west beach, so we ended up staying at Royal Orchid all the time.

The local beach dog, named Binky by some Dutch kids, or maybe that was her real name but I don’t think she had an owner. She was very cute but a little spoiled with all the affection everybody was giving her. One night she woke us up by scratching our door, but we didn’t let her in.

While in China we watched a documentary about squid fishing in Thailand. They use lots of extremely bright lamps on boats, and gradually turn them off to lure squids into their nets. Some nights we saw these boats, shining like miniature suns out on the ocean.

We got a few lovely sunsets from the restaurant – when the sky wasn’t covered with a thick blanket of clouds.

And the rest of this post is dedicated to a stray kitten we found.

When I first saw it, it was lying on a shelf  in a never-used store, mewling weakly. I went there to pet it and it was very happy to get a little attention. It looked so feeble that I thought it had been abandoned and got lost.

Gradually we learned that this scrawny little cat was quite fierce for its size, and could definitely fend for itself. When it saw a dog it curved its back, hissed and tried to make a long threatening mewl. Though being a kitten, the latter sounded so pathetic that we couldn’t help laughing a little. The dogs just ignored it.

Another day it caught a tiny mouse, but it squeaked so heart-breaking every time the cat pounced it that we felt a bit sad.

Sleeping on the reception desk. We didn’t find out if they got red paw prints everywhere later.

Just in a few days we’ll see our own cat again. Looking forward to it.

Day 240 – Bling Bling Bangkok

After 4 weeks in China, we welcomed the change of arriving in a different country, and our last country on this journey. We arrived in Bangkok, Thailand on the late afternoon and took a cab straight to our CouchSurfing host. Our first impression of Thailand was that people are extremely friendly and the taxis actually have working seatbelts

Our host was having a small birthday gathering with some other CSers and friends, we were happy to join in even though we were quite tired. Thai food was cooked, something we had been really looking forward to try (real Thai food that is, after years of eating Thai food home in Sweden). Two of the same dish was cooked, a spicy version and a mild one (for us non-Thai guests). It turned out that our version was quite spicy for us, and the person who cut the chilli fruits spent the rest of the evening with her fingers in a bowl because they burned so badly.

The next day we went to a travel agency and got our combo night-train, bus and boat tickets that would eventually take us to the beautiful Ko Phangan beaches, but until then we had one day to tour the capital. We left our big bags at the travel agency and headed out. A couple of blocks from a subway station we found this beautiful temple. So far, from all the Buddhist temples we have seen, the Thai ones seem to be the most colourful. Oh, and do you notice that the sky is blue? It felt refreshing after weeks of hazy and cloudy skies in China.

For lunch Johan got finally to taste his favourite Thai dish, Tom Yum Goong, although the verdict was that it was not more spicy than the Swedish version he had eaten at home, still delicious.

We headed to the river to catch one of the famous river boats. The river is quite busy and both locals and tourists hustle on the boats. We got of after a couple of stops to take a closer look at some of the sights.

After visiting many different Buddhas throughout our trip we thought that one more couldn’t hurt so we headed to visit The Temple of the Reclining Buddha. We had read very little about Bangkok before arriving so we had no expectations of what we would see here. The Reclining Buddha took our breath away. Not only is it huge, it is also quite beautiful and well preserved.

Wat Pho, or Wat Phra Chettuphon Wimon Mangkhalaram Ratchaworamahawihan which is the temple’s real name, is a huge complex of about 800,000 square meters. We spent a whole afternoon walking around and discovering all its corners.

The temple is quite impressive, not only is it one of the oldest, it contains over 1,000 Buddha images and every little detail is beautiful.

After our stay at a Buddhist temple in South Korea, I find there is something very soothing about monks chanting.

What happened after the temple we have no proof of, on our way back to the travel agency it started to rain, a lot! By the time we arrived we were completely soaked, there was no inch of us dry. We changed our clothes, got our tickets and headed for the train. The structure of the train car surprised us, it seemed like a transformer. The table was removable and the two seats were restructured into a bottom bed and from the top another bed was folded down. At the end we slept quite comfortable.

Day 239 – High-Rise Hong Kong

Though nowadays Hong Kong is reunited with China, going there includes all the hassle of an international border crossing. In addition, finding our way from the metro station in Shenzhen to the actual border was less than straightforward, but eventually we found some signs showing the way.

Being non-Chinese we were allowed to cut in line at immigration control, so we could stand in a slow-moving line of 10-20 people instead of a slow-moving line of thousands. It felt a little bit unfair, but we didn’t complain.

Central Hong Kong and Kowloon is like a combination of all the craziness of a big Chinese city and all the neon signs and expensive stores of Tokyo. And coming from China, everything did indeed feel quite expensive. Not silly expensive like Australia but still a strain on our budget.

Travellers we met in Chengdu recommended we went to Chung King Mansions as we wanted reasonable prices for accommodation, so there we went. Can you find the sign in the above photo?

And this is what we found inside, a sprawling market where you could exchange money or buy anything from vegetables to cameras and watches. In a small side-alley we found some elevators with signs showing which “hotel” lies on which floor. After discovering that we had gone up the wrong building, we went down again, stood in the line for another elevator in another alley we eventually arrived at our hotel (which according to Lonely Planet was a lot better than the other options there, which after having seen the room is frankly depressing).

Speaking of the room, it was the tiniest double you can imagine and it smelled bad and would have benefited from a proper cleaning, but it had a private bath and AC.

Since the tiny elevator was almost always full when it reached the 5th floor we went searching for an alternative way down. It turned out that you could walk down stairs 2 floors, cross some kind of maintenance area which was in some way outside the building and full of surprised workers, go down another pair of stairs, through a garbage room and you’d come out on the second floor of a shopping mall.

Trying to save what little money we had left we walked around town, looking at high buildings, double-decker buses and brand stores.

Taking the ferry from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island is very cheap (only cheaper transports we used on this trip was the Beijing metro and the buses in Buenos Aires) and a given choice for us.

Some fishermen wearing the traditional hats of the boat people – one of the older population groups in Hong Kong, who used to live their entire lives aboard boats.

On the other side of the water we took this tram climbing the steep mountain slope.

At the top we walked around admiring the view, but it started raining heavily so we had to go back and hide inside Burger King (where we usually never eat, but they’re cheap-ish and less horrible than McD).

Perhaps a heritage from British occupation forces colliding with the relaxed attitude of the Chinese, there are ban signs almost everywhere, and you can even read what kind of punishment you could expect. Somewhere else there was a HK$1000 fine on eating/drinking and many high buildings warn about throwing cigarette butts from windows – maximum penalty HK$10000 and 6 months imprisonment.

The Hong Kong Museum of History does not lie about what it contains. We got to know all about the area from when it was formed by volcanoes, how it was populated by different groups and how it was occupied by both the British and later the Japanese.

After having traveled the world, we are now more vigilant whenever we are told a historic account. Unlike the war museum in Dandong, this one didn’t have a printed warning in the guide book, but we thought that it appeared slightly angled from the point where the Europeans arrived. The suffering during the Japanese occupation was described with a lot of material and detail, even though they tried to keep the population alive (but they weren’t very good at it). I mean, it was far from as brutal as their invasions of Korea. The British occupation, on the other hand, focused more on historical events, signed documents and trade. The segregation and discrimination of the Chinese was only mentioned when it was outlawed.

The domed roof of a mosque seemed like a popular hangout for pigeons.

The city has an abundance of shiny skyscrapers in different colors and shapes.

Day 225 – Who Wouldn’t Want To Hug A Panda?

We left Xi’an and took yet another hard-sleeper night train. When we woke up in the morning the outdoor scenery had dramatically changed. Green mountains, rice fields, buffaloes and people about their fields.

We arrived in Chengdu only to realize that we were stuck. Since Tibet is closed off to foreigners at the moment that was out of the question. So our plan was to stay here for a couple of days and then head south to Guilin and explore the beautiful scenery there, but there is only one train everyday from Chengdu to Guilin, and of course it was sold out for more than a week ahead. Since we have a plane to catch in Hong Kong, there was no way we would make it to both Guilin and Hong Kong in the few days we would have left.

At least, there are worse places to be stuck in than Chengdu, the city is quite pleasant in spite of it being busy. The streets are lined with big trees and the weather was warm. The hostel we were staying at was very nice, they even had a pet rabbit and a pet turtle On top of that we met two people from previous places we’ve visited, a girl that did the Great Ocean Road tour in Australia, and a guy we met at a party in onsen-town Beppu, Japan.

Oh, I almost forgot: and there are pandas in Chengdu. Yes, the real reason why we made our way here was to visit the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base. The pandas are really adorable animals, they almost don’t look like any regular animal, rather more like a giant teddy bear.

The giant panda is one of the animals still living on earth that have been here the longest. They spend most of their time eating bamboo, and sleeping since bamboo is low on nutrients. Apparently they used to be carnivorous but changed to the more peaceful vegetarian lifestyle.

Well, not only are the giant pandas an endangered species, apparently they are reluctant to breed, and that is what this research facility specializes on helping them with. Pandas live alone from the age of 1 and each panda has a large territory, so they meet seldom other pandas and when they do come across one it might just not be the right one.

We also got to see the not so famous red panda, the cousin of the giant panda. You don’t hear much about these cute little pandas, I guess their big cousins cast a large shadow, but the red pandas are extremely charming.

We didn’t hear a lot about how the work with reintroducing the pandas into their natural habitat was going, maybe because they seem to not manage very well on their own, or maybe because there isn’t a lot of natural habitat left for them to go back to. It is certainly interesting to see how things will unfold for this ancient teddy bear.

Another giant attraction close to Chengdu is this giant Buddha standing on the wall of a mountain in Le Shan. The park is beautiful and the Buddha quite impressive.

Of course, we weren’t the only ones that wanted to see the biggest stone Buddha in the world today. We had to wait for more than 1 hour in line to walk the narrow path down the mountain. But it was worth it.

We visited the main temple in the park where people gathered to burn giant incense sticks and giant candles, and bow a couple of times in prayer.

The park is covered with carvings on the mountain walls and statues of different Bodhisattvas, most of which look quite deteriorated, something that actually brings more character to the place.

I had to hold myself but Johan went to the toilet in the park, which apparently was far from clean and there was no fresh air to be found there after urinating.

Oh, one more thing…

Just a couple of more panda pictures before we go.