Chinese wine and dine...

Many, many, many excellent (free) dinners :-)

Last Tuesday I had the very best Chinese dinner ever. Collin was invited by a professor from Beijing University (who is visiting Yunnan University) to have dinner. And Collin asked me to join him. After the obligatory exchange of gifts (we gave mooncakes and wine and got Moutai and Pu'er tea back) we went to the restaurant. We found out that the professor on his turn was invited by the owner of a chain of restaurants and asked us to come along. Lucky us!!!
The restaurant was a pretty luxurious one, specialized in serving abalone (in Dutch: zee-oor). Abalone is an exclusive kind of seafood and cost in China approximately 1000RMB (€100) per serving... It was delicious. Served with an excellent sauce and a sea cucumber we had an amazing starter. After this the table was filled with more great Chinese food and we didn't do anything else but toasting all night long! Superb experience!!!
On Wednesday Shos and I decided to invite some people over to do some home-style hotpot and drink the Moutai I got as a gift (which costs around €55 for 0,5 liter; nice gift...). Once again we enjoyed our food, although it was extremely spicy. We also drank the bottle of Moutai and we all concluded that it was not worth the money, but then again... We didn't pay for it ;-)
And on Friday we (Shos, Aaron, Sophie, I and some other "foreign experts") were invited to join Yunnan University (a.k.a. Yunda) to the Provincial Government banquet to celebrate the 58th National Day of China. Once again a lot of food and drinks, this time in a five-star hotel just outside the city. Lots of important people present such as the consular-generals of Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Fancy, but the food could not match the Tuesday dinner or our own hotpot! But it was nice to be there and witness how Chinese celebrate events like this.

I also had to teach quite a bit this week and weekend, but everything went just fine. Also gave my first "exams" to my students and graded them. Really funny to read the answers some of them come up with. I will collect some of the funniest ones and dedicate a separate post to them sometime soon.

Now, vacation. A week of no teaching, but relaxing and doing some preparation for the coming weeks!

Zaijian,
Meester Rudi

Mooncakes

Mid-Autumn Festival a.k.a Moon Festival

The celebration of the end of the summer harvesting season. For me this just means that I got a beautiful box full of mooncakes as a gift from the School of Economics. Mooncakes are little, round, dry cakes with some kind of filling in the middle. Too bad I don't like 90% of them and it is very hard too see on the outside what kind of filling you're going to end up with...

Another unfortunate thing is that during the October Holiday I do not really have an entire week off... Every teacher has to make up his/her Thursday and Friday classes. Shos and Aaron happy since they only have a few hours of teaching. I, on the other hand, have four different classes with a total of ten hours to make up :-(
And the really annoying part is that I have to make up for them in the weekend before the vacation. So next week I have to prepare an awful lot of classes and teach them as well. That's going to be a great week and weekend... Oh well, there are worse things! Below I added some pictures of YangPu campus, a campus where I have to teach 2 days a week, some 45 minutes outside town.

And even though it is a holiday, Shos and I are not going anywhere. Just spend a week in Kunming without teaching. We are busy enough as I have to prepare classes and Shos has to study for her GRE and write essays for her graduate school application. But since a few days the weather is very nice again here so we will spend quite some time in parks and other relaxing places :-)

Now we're off to an orientation meeting, tour and banquet organized by the Foreign Affairs Office (little late, but still...) and later tonight there's the housewarming party of Sander and Susan. What a bad life...

Greetingzzz,
Ruud

Weekend Extravaganza

An absolutely fantastic week and weekend with Mark!!!

On Wednesday morning Mark finally arrived. Picked him up from the airport and after a big hug we went to my place. After lots of small talk I had to go to work and Mark checked out Kunming. At night we celebrated his arrival together with Shos, Sander, Susan, Marc and Marianne (a group of cool Dutch people living here as well). Got some great food at a small Muslim restaurant and ended the night doing drinking games in Sander and Susan's apartment. Which, by the way, is a really cool place and Shos and I are seriously considering moving in there when we get kicked out of our current place, the Yunda Binguan.

On day two Mark did a day trip to the stone forest and I had to work. The original plan for Friday was for Mark and me to fly to Lijiang. However, for some reason plane tickets got very expensive and we decided to take a nightbus. Getting to the busstation in time was a little tricky since Mark got stuck in traffic when coming back from the Stone Forest... but we made it and had an excellent trip!! We got stuck in the back of the sleeperbus (5 beds right next to each other, so a big chance you will end up sleeping against a smelly Chinese guy) and weren't to happy to start. But... it worked out great since no one else got any of the back beds... five beds for Mark and me :-)

So in the early morning we were in Lijiang, got picked up at the busstation by Mama Naxi (the owner of the hostel we stayed), dropped our bags and started exploring the "authentic" streets of Old Town Lijiang. Of course we also paid a visit to the Black Dragon Pool Park. Unfortunately the weather was shitty all day long and due to heavy clouds there was no sight of the Yulong Snow Mountain. But we don't need sunshine and splendid views to have fun... we are perfectly capable of having fun without any of that ;-)




After a "couple" of beers at the Frosty Morning (excellent English pub) later that night we decided not to go to Tiger Leaping Gorge but go to Dali instead. The gorge is amazing, but due to all the rain of the last couple of weeks it is pretty dangerous and we were there to have fun and not to feel crappy because of a near impossible hike... So on Saturday morning we jumped in a bus to Dali, got a room and checked out Dali. Not too long since we planned to do a small hike, involving two cable cars to get up and down the mountain. Some spectacular views, 11 km and approx. 4 hours later we were back in our hostel.

The people at our hostel told us they would close early because they were going to a party. No problem but how do we get in then..? Well they came up with a very simple solution: they gave us the key to the front door a.k.a entrance to the bar... little strange but good enough for us. After we showed some of our amazing dance moves to the Chinese crowd and drinking a couple of beers with some random Chinese dudes at the Sakura Bar, we decided to check out the party our hostel guys were going to. The place was called Zoola and we had a little drawn map of its location. It was far and strange to get there but.... what a party!!! A big house, fun people, extremely good music (techno, drum & bass all mixed with live acts of people playing guitars, all kinds of drums and one of those big horn flute things...). Got back at around 4.30 in the morning and after a couple of hours of sleep we took the 8 o'clock bus back to Kunming.

In Kunming we had a lazy Sunday afternoon together with Shos in Cui Hu (Green Lake Park) and enjoyed the Chinese people staring at us. At night dinner with "the" crowd, some more beers, tequila and fun at The Box and as a result of that we ended up in a KTV place... After two hours of showing all our non-musical qualities we went back home for a well deserved night of rest.

Tonight Mark is leaving for Beijing. I have no idea what we are going to do today, but not too much since we both still need to recover from the past few days ;-)

Greetingzzz,
Ruudje (& Mark)

New people and new sports

Another really good week went by...

Last Saturday I met him... I knew he was coming for quite some time, but now he's here! Marc Frencken, my former high school classmate arrived in Kunming and we get along just great! After a few beers on Saturday night, we went to watch and play football on Sunday. I think it was the first time in 15 years I played a real football match on a big field and it was great. Painful, but great ;-) Afterwards we decided to go for a bicycle ride and enjoyed it so much that we got back after dark.

On Monday and Tuesday I didn't do anything special. All I really did was preparing classes for the rest of this week. Preparation is quite some work (at least a lot more than I expected/hoped), but I still like doing it. On Wednesday I started teaching again and in the evening I played a game of indoor football. Again a lot of fun with some great people.

Thursday and Friday teaching again. I am getting used to it by now and am taking it a lot slower in classes. To be effective I need to be careful not to use too many "difficult" words and when I use them I should explain them. This takes some time and I get less material covered, but it does give me the feeling that my students actually understand what I am talking about. Did some more cycling in the afternoon with Marc and in the evening we had a dinner with all the American teachers from Oberlin and Whitman (two colleges in the US). And I must say that we once again have a pretty nice group of people.

Now quickly prepare for classes because on Wednesday Mark (Mennen) will be here!!!

Ciao,
El Rudolfo

First teaching experiences

Foreign Expert @ Yunnan University, School of Economics

It finally happened... Last Wednesday I started my teaching "career". My first class was at Yangpu campus, a 40 minute bus ride from where I live. The topic of the class was "Theory and Practice of Multinational and was supposed to last for 3 hours (in China also known as 3x 45 minutes...). And they don't do what you call small classes here. 45 pair of eyes were staring at me, all wondering what that strange, tall foreigner was going to say. But I have to admit, everything went quite well :-) No unexpected things happened, I didn't make any embarrassing mistakes and I even liked it!

The Thursday was more of the same although this time I had to deal with senior (4th year bachelor) students and I could just cross the street to the main campus instead of bussing to Yangpu. Did my two classes (3 hours each) for the day and left again with a happy feeling! The pictures you see are from the main campus and this is definitely one of the more beautiful and quiet spots in Kunming!!

(the building on the bottom right is called "Huize Hall" and is the original main building of Yunnan University. Do I sense some Dutch influence in Kunming?!)

Today I had the same students as on Wednesday so at least I won't have to remember that many names... Again everything went without surprises, so I can conclude that my first week was a "success"!! :-)

Of course there are many differences between Chinese students and i.e. Dutch students and I will have to get used to them. The main difference is that they do not speak up when you ask questions even when they know the answer. I keep stressing that they will be graded on participation, but that doesn't seem to affect them. Hopefully they will become somewhat more reactive (or even proactive) after a couple of weeks.
They also had two tips for me: talk slower and write more clearly... Good to know!

Houdoe,
Meester Ruud

A plane, a lot of rain, but back "home"

It didn't go exactly as planned, but I'm back in Kunming!

Picking up the passport with my new Chinese Z-visum and catching the train to Guangzhou went without any problems at all. Taking the metro from one trainstation to the other, also flawless. Finding the ticket office to buy my train ticket to Kunming worked out well. BUT after standing in line for over an hour they kindly told me that all trains to Kunming were completely sold out for the next 2 days... Bummer! Since I absolutely did not feel like spending three nights in this huge, commercial city I decided to fly back.

Besides a short delay due to heavy rainfall the flight was alright and at around 22.30 I was back in Kunming. Short taxi ride home and a difficult discussion with the frontdesk lady I got the key to my (our) new apartment. We now have an apartment on the other side of the hotel where it is more quiet and people can't stare into your room from the adjacent buildings :-) So room 401 at the Yunda Binguan is where I (we) will live for the next 10 months.

("old" pictures of the Tiger Temple near Kanchanaburi)

The next days I spent getting all our stuff out of storage, unpacking and "decorating" the room. And of course a big part of my time is spent on preparing for classes that start next Wednesday. The schedule is pretty full since they put all my hours in 3 days. So Monday and Tuesday are off, Wednesday 14.30-17.20, Thursday 8.00-17.20, and Friday 8.00-12.00. Luckily I only have to go two days to Yangpu campus which is 45 minutes away by bus. The Thursday is on the campus I live next to, so at walking distance!

In the next post I will tell you all about meeting my students and my first "classes"! Tonight a BBQ from the NBSO and tomorrow Shoshannah will be back. Normal life can start... ;-)

Zaijian,
Ruudje

Palawan and the Asian Las Vegas

Almost back home...

No more Philippines... After Moalboal (which is pretty boring, especially when you don't plan to dive) we went back to Cebu. Spend half a day there and didn't really like the place. Just another big city. The only nice thing we saw was an old Portuguese fortress. However, the next day we went to Palawan, the skinny, long island in the south west. Arrived in Puerta Princesa and transferred via a tricylce to the bus station right away where we took a Jeepney to go to Sabang, home of the longest, navigable underground river in the world.

Sabang itself is a miniature town with no electricity and just a few shops but it does have an absolutely stunning beach. Wide and white with fine sands even when you walk into the sea!! So we spend some time on the beach and in the sea and did a hike to the river. The river is on of the more beautiful things I have seen during this trip. Lots of stalagmites (and -tites of course ;-), swallows, bats and a ceiling that reaches over 60 meters at some places! More than worth going to!! And you have to admit that this picture looks so amazing it looks like it's fake...

When we left I found out just before the Jeepney took off that I left my cell phone in our bungalow... the driver was willing to wait for 10-15 minutes so I ran back to get it. But of course Murphy's Law works just as well in the Philippines and we had a bungalow on the complete opposite side of the beach as the Jeepney was waiting... So I had a great workout, running at noon on my flip-flops for 15 minutes! Whaaa!! But I made it and it just took a few liters of sweat and some heavy breathing ;-)
Besides that, the transfer to Manila went without problems (except for running into the biggest asshole Filipino in the world...) and after a rather sleepless night we got up at 5.00 to make our way to Clark Airport. It was a long and tiresome morning but at around 16.00 we finally arrived in Macau. Macau is a very cool place, it's the Las Vegas of Asia so it has some huge buildings (casino/hotel things...), but you can also still see the Portuguese influence in a lot of buildings. I even found a pair of Adidas running shoes in my size for less than 30 euro! The other nice thing is that Macau is very small, you can go almost everywhere on foot, so no need to figure out difficult bus schedules or something.

On Saturday afternoon Shos went to the Chinese border to catch a bus to Yangshuo and do a trip to some other places, while I took a ferry to Hong Kong to arrange my visa. And that is exactly what I did today :-) I can pick it up tomorrow morning, have a train at 10.32 to Guangzhou and hopefully there are still tickets for the 14.13 overnight train to Kunming. If so, than I will be back "home" on Wednesday afternoon!!!
Here in Hong Kong I am staying at the Ascension House, a guesthouse run by a Scandinavian Christian organization. I know that you all think: That so does NOT sound like something for Ruud! And you are right! But this place is great! Nice people, good beds, yummy food! And it is cheap to stay: for HK$ 125 you can sleep and get 3 meals a day! Try beating that in this expensive place :-) Probably some of the people working there will be in Kunming later this year so we might see each other again.

Pictures will follow asap, but this computer won't let me connect my camera for some reason! (updated on 22 Aug)

Ciao vanuit Hong Kong!
Rudy

Beaching in the Phillies

Just a few of the many islands...
Here I am again! After all the rice terraces in the north we went straight down to Manilla where we had to catch a flight to Bacolod on Negros Island. Everything went well and in the afternoon of the 1st of August we moved directly from the "airport" to the bus station to catch a bus to Cadiz. Again no problems!! Got a room and the next morning we took the boat to Bantayan Island where we were planning to do some serious beach time. However... we both didn't like the island! It is to big to get the real island feeling and the beaches were far from extremely nice. That called for a quick decision and resulted in us leaving the next day and heading for Malaspascua Island. After a tiresome boat, tricycle, bus, boat trip we arrived at Malapascua and this was great! Nice small island, very friendly people, white beaches... just what we wanted.

Besides being on the beach and doing nothing I also went for three dives. Malapascua is known for the Thresher Sharkes and of course I wanted to see those! But no luck for me! Just a nice dive but no sharks. In the afternoon I did two more dives around Gato-Gato Island and those were very good. After 5 days we decided it was enough (and honestly we got a little bored because there is absolutely nothing to do besides doing nothing...). However the local kids were practising for some kind of festival and they had the best music and dance ever! Drums, trumpets and dancing kids, great way to spend an evening! And to share this experience with you I made you a movie (turn up the volume!!):

Yesterday we moved to Moalboal, a beach/divers town in the middle of the eastern side of Cebu Island. Going to look for the White beach this afternoon and I will tell you next time what we think of this place. Up to this point I am still a little unsure whether to recommend the Philippines as a destination to anyone. For divers there is no doubt that they should come here but for "normal" backpackers... I don't know. There isn't a lively backpackers scene as in Thailand or Laos but there are some beautiful sights here. The rice terraces in Luzon are beautiful, some of the beaches are great, but it just doesn't excite me as much as other places. The easy thing is that most people speak good to great English, so getting around is very easy!
Another "fun" thing here is that we are really getting into the Philippine way of living especially when we were on Malapascua. That means waking up at 6.00 and going to bed at 21.00-22.00... Strange, but there is so much noise outside that you just can't continue sleeping. On Saturday we have a flight to Puerta Princessa and that will be the last real destination for us in the Philippines. More on that in the next post!

Hastelavista,
Ikke

The Philippines :-)

Beautiful and strange...

Since last Friday I am in the Philippines. After a short but exhausting flight during the night we arrived at Manila around seven in the morning. Got money and took a bus to the north of Luzon (Baguio). Uninteresting town where we just slept and we took a bus early the next day to Sagada. This small place is really nice to spend a couple of days. The ride there is one never to forget! We visited a waterfall which can only be reached by walking through the rice terraces where this area is famous for. Also visited some hanging coffins and a cave where they "bury", stack the coffins of the death.




Today we took a bus to Banaue, another place famous for the rice fields. The bus trip itself has to be one of worlds most beautiful trips, seeing the inmense rice terraces and driving over small, unpaved roads through the mountains... just great!! The ones here are even more exciting than the ones in Sagada. Did a nice tour through some of the fields and tomorrow we go to another town in this area.



The Philippines are kind of strange... although it is an Asian country, the people and their language and habits are totally different from all other Asian countries I have been to. Almost all of them speak English and their native language sounds like a mix between Spanish and English. Same goes for the food... it is not as special as Thai or Chinese food. They serve either Western fast food such as burgers, or rice with a little bit of meat or fish. Too bad we have not been able to find really good food. The one good thing they do have is cheap and tasty liquor. A wide choice between gin, brandy, rum and whisky for next to nothing isn't particularly bad :-)

That is it for now. Tomorrow we have an overnight bus to Manila and from there we fly south to Negros island, hoping to find a great beach to chill on for a couple of days!!

Groeten uit "Azie",
Rudolf

Thailand

Dogs..? Beware!!!

After our stay in Vang Vieng we traveled on to Vientiene. Stayed there just for half a day since it is nothing but a boring city. Took a bus across the border to Nong Khiaw in Thailand where we visited a great temple with a bunch of extraordinary statues!

We liked the town, but decided to go on to the Kai Yao National Park further down south. Took a train and had a fun trip there. At some point I had to put up my umbrella because it was raining through one of the windows and they couldn't get it closed...

Changed from train to bus in Khorat to go to Pak Chong, where we took a taxi to the Greenleaf Guesthouse. Determined to explore the park on our own we ended up having a strange day. We couldn't find the bus to the park and were lucky enough to catch a ride with some workers going in that direction. From the park entrance to the actual walking trails was another 14km, but once again we hitch-hiked our way in! Did a great 8.3 km trek through the jungle just to end up (totally soaked) at the famous waterfall from the movie: The Beach! Swam a little in the pool there and to get back we once again had to catch two different rides! So we caught 4 different rides with total strangers and it was great! Thai people are (like most Asians) very friendly.

Next day a bus to Kanchanaburi via Bangkok. Here we hired a motorbike and went to the Tiger Temple, a place run by monks where you can actually touch and be close to tigers. Great experience and definitely worth going to! Did some more driving through a beautiful landscape along the Death Railway.

And just when we were on our way back to our guesthouse it happened: two dogs! And for a change one of them decided to jump right in front of our bike and we crashed. I wasn't driving fast because I saw the dogs, but couldn't avoid it anymore. The result: my right side is blue and red... My elbow is worst with two deep cuts, than my toes and last my shoulder. Shos has nothing because I served as her airbag ;-) Bad end of an otherwise good day! Once again we were lucky enough to be in Thailand because people helped us (drove me to a "hospital" where I got free medical care and medicins).

Today we paid a visit to the famous (but boring) Bridge over the River Kwai and we are going to Bangkok. Stay there for one night and then we are off to the Philippines! Really looking forward to that!

De Mazzel,
Ruudje

Luang Prabang & Vang Vieng

So what have we been up to?

Luang Prabang is nice to hang out and has a number of good things to do. Shos met an old high school friend and we already met Paddy and Becky, and English couple doing a world trip. Together we went to the Kuangsi Waterfall and did a bicycle trip. The waterfall is great and everyone should visit it while in Luang Prabang! Cycling was fun but not as successful as we anticipated... the temple we visited was closed and we were unable to locate the paper making village! But we ended up at a small local shop, drinking Beerlao and having a good time! Food was great, especially at night when there was this little buffet stand where you could get a big plate of food for 5000 Kip (40 Euro cent). We went there almost every night, just as "all" other foreigners ;-) There is also a very nice night market and they actually have stuff you would want to buy like umbrella's and duvet covers. But we decided we already have enough stuff in China and didn't get anything...


On Saturday we took a bus to Vang Vieng where we arrived 6 hours later. Didn't do much the first day, but on Sunday we went for our first Tubing trip :-) Just as six months ago it was GREAT! We took a bottle of whisky and coke, bought several Beerlao's, did a lot of rope jumping into the river and got drunk! Really an amazing way to spend a day!


Click here and here for videos of the rope jumps :-)

The next day Shos ad I took off on a motorbike and drove over a small road we were hoping that would lead us back to Vang Vieng. And it did!! We had to cross a "bridge" made of floating bamboo mats and enjoyed seeing all the little kids playing in the water and greeting us. It always rules when you find something to do that is really off the beaten track and we certainly succeeded this time!!


Yesterday we tubed again, other day, same story ;-) Today we are not doing anything... one reason is that it is raining and the other is that Shos needs to do some work for her GRE and applications and I need to read some material for the classes I will be teaching next semester. Probably we'll take a bus to Vientiane tomorrow, spend a day there and then cross into Thailand.


That's all for now folks!
Ruud

Back in Laos!!!

Sorry for the long silence!!
So what happened since my last post?

Quite a lot actually!! We (Shoshannah and I) left for our summer trip last Friday at 17.00. However before we left I had some issues getting money from the ATM and this still has not been resolved. Probably my card somehow got demagnetized or something because it just won't work anymore... And I must say that that is pretty inconvenient when you are just about to leave for a six week holiday! But at the end of the day we took a sleeper bus to Laos where we arrived almost 23 hours late and our holiday could start.

Udomxai in the north of Laos is a boring city and mostly used as a transportation hub. So we left the next day to go to Nong Khiaw. The trip was absolutely stunning and we really loved it. The landscape up here is great and never gets boring. In Nong Khiaw we didn't do that much because we were still low on money, hoping to improve that situation when we arrive in Luang Prabang. Still we had a nice couple of days up there and it is definitely worth going!!
On Tuesday we arrived in Luang Prabang. This city is very relaxed, has a lot of fun things to do and serves many, many cold BeerLao's :-) We still have some money issues, but we are working on it... The plan is to stay here for a couple of days and then head for Vang Vieng! Looking forward to that since Vang Vieng is the tubing capital of Laos :-) Already met a bunch of fun people so nothing to worry about!!


Ciao,
Ruudje