World Cup Football Qualifier

P.R.CHINA - AUSTRALIA
0 - 0

For months everyone that likes football was eagerly anticipating the upcoming world cup qualifier between China and Australia played here in Kunming. Kunming was probably chosen by the Chinese because of its altitude and they were hoping the Aussies wouldn't be well prepared for these circumstances. Shos and I did not really plan on going, but last Wednesday after class everyone was talking about going to the game... so we decided to go as well and I am glad we did! It was great!!!

The game sucked, but who cares... we were dressed up as fans of "the Socceroos" and on our way to get some tickets on the black market. Getting tickets was very simple because the game wasn't sold out at all. We met up with some other "foreigners" (who all decided to cheer for China...) and had a blast. But I think that the pictures below will tell the story. I have to say that all supporters were awesome, both Chinese and Aussies. No problems at all and of course all Chinese wanted their photo taken with an Aussie and vice versa :-)



And we also got a small preview of what can be expected at the (for China extremely important) Olympics. After the game you could see two things: supporters and military... probably more military than supporters. The cool thing was that they acted like the British guards: they cannot show emotions or react to your provocations. And of course we had to test it! They all passed, except for one that had to "smile" when Marc was pulling strange faces and saying retarded things in Chinese.

And finally a picture that is high in my list of all time favorites: Dressed up as football supporters making fun of the Chinese guards together with this great old Chinese guy all doing the "V-sign"!!!
No more for this week.
De groeten,
Ruudje

Spring is in the air!!!

Sun, tea-houses and Cui Hu :-)

Kunming finally decided to honour its name: City of Eternal Spring! The entire week it has been sunny and warm. So no more shivering at home and no more winter jackets. The best thing about this weather is that after class you can go to Green Lake park, find a spot on one of the terraces of the tea-houses and enjoy the sun and an unlimited 8 RMB cup of tea while studying some Chinese. At moments like that life is sooo good!!!
And the Yunda campus looks beautiful now that all the trees and plants begin to blossom!


Besides enjoying the sun, teaching business negotiation and finance, and studying Chinese Shos and I also started going to the gym again on a regular basis. We found a really nice place very close to where we live. Hopefully the results of our efforts will be visible soon ;-) Shos also applied to another school and with a little bit of luck we will know soon whether she gets accepted, but we are very positive about it.
As soon as we know more I'll let you know too!

That's all for now. Talk to you soon!
Ruud

The future...

Chinese classes, rejections and applications...

Last weekend wasn't one of wonderful news for Shos: both Princeton and Berkeley turned down her application. This kind of puts a cross through our US plans. Both no worries, there still are a couple of schools in the Netherlands she can apply to.

The one "good" thing about it is that it is now almost certain that we'll be coming to Holland in the summer. It also implies that I have to start looking for a job. So at the moment I am surfing the Internet looking especially for Management Traineeships. I think it would be a great way to start my career. A one to three year intensive program in which your skills are further developed with the goal to become part of that company's higher general management. For me the most important question is which companies to apply to...

Since a new semester started at Yunda there are also a whole bunch of new people and I hang out with a couple of them regularly: Eric from Belgium and Miriam from Germany. And since the weather is finally what it is supposed to be (nice and warm) we can enjoy good moments on terraces and on the grass :-)
And besides doing job research and hanging out at terraces I am also busy with studying Chinese. And it is quite fun to do. Writing and reading gets better, but pronouncing the words correctly remains oh so difficult! Even simply putting the right tones on words is still an arduous task for me. But I will persevere and get my brain to recognize the tones and also pronounce them.

Now on with the job hunt and studying Chinese characters!!!
Ruud Batta

Oh China......

Some things are great but others are just so hard to get used to...

Last week we had dinner with Collin in a little Thai restaurant on Wen Hua Xiang (the little alley near the Yunda Binguan). Everything was great until I was halfway through my dish and discovered an ugly, fat maggot in my dish :-( Pointed it out to the waitress and no problem I got a new dish... Not that it never happens in Western restaurants, but judging by the waitress' reaction this seems to happen quite regularly. Bleeegh!!!

I also started working again. My work week is like this: 7x45 minutes on Tuesday and 2x45 minutes on odd week Thursdays. Not too shabby ehh :-) For the first 4 hours on Tuesday I have the same students as last semester which is nice since I know what their strengths and weaknesses are (and they know mine...). But the last three hours I have another, new class to teach: Cases in International Business. I was very much looking forward to doing this course although it is an elective and supposedly I would only have 10 students. But a small group lends itself very well to interactive and intensive working together. But last Tuesday there where exactly three students present in this class... Students can come and leave this class as they please for the first three weeks of the semester and only then have to decide whether to take my class or not. I would love 10 students, but three... But nonetheless I am sure it will once again be a great semester.

Besides teaching I am also going to take Chinese classes starting this Monday. Hopefully I can get myself to sitting in class and listening to a teacher every morning. Never have been very good at that (and thank God Maastricht University existed when I had to pick a university!!!). But I am looking forward to it.

Then something totally different. I never knew that Chinese like self-mockery, but in Shanghai we got a great example of it. I don't know what the guy is trying to prove, but I would NOT put my face/body on a huge billboard in the centre of any city with that text next to me at that particular spot... mistake or self-knowledge?? :-) Since we got back to Kunming Shos and I both have a hard time getting used to the horrible traffic here. i am not talking about traffic jams and impossibilities to get anywhere like in Bangkok, but just the total incapability of Kunming people to drive, bike or walk. You don't wait on the sidewalk to cross a street but stand on the street approx. 1.5m away from the sidewalk. Cars can always turn right (even when the light is red) and that is exactly what they do even when that means (nearly) running over pedestrians or bicycles.

Besides that they love to honk!!! Even when there is no reason at all, they still lean on their horn like their lives depend on it. And this still goes on even now the government put in place a rule that forbids unnecessary use of the horn. It drives us nuts and sometimes almost causes accident instead of preventing them. Imagine cycling on a deserted road in a straight line. All of a sudden a big bus approaches you from behind (no other traffic in sight) and that bus thinks it is necessary to honk right before it passes you. Well i can tell you, it scares the hell out of you. A bus horn is loud, very loud and the only effect on me is that I scare and almost yank my steering wheel to either side causing me to land in the ditch or get run over by the bus... Sooo annoying!!!

But well, besides that I really don't have anything to complain about. We're living a good life over here. At this point we're both a little nervous because we're waiting for the results of Shos' application to grad school. But soon we'll know :-)

Tot snel dan maar weer lieve kijkbuiskinderen!
Meneer De Uil a.k.a Ruudje

Shanghai, Nanjing & back home

Shanghai is a cool place!!!

The very first impression of Shanghai is that it is an amazing city. The metro works perfectly, it looks clean, people seem to be more "civilized" than in Kunming and it just gave us a good feeling. Our hostel was right on People's Square, very conveniently located near a metro stop. The first day we visited the China town in Shanghai (doesn't that sound great...). Nothing special, just some brand new old-style houses and an awful lot of Chinese tourists that buy the flimsy and way too expensive souvenirs that are for sale in the hundreds of stores :-)
After that we walked to Pudong, the island of Shanghai where all the skyscrapers are located. Prices for real estate are incredibly high around there as we found out after some window shopping at several real estate agencies. But the sights are great. Beautiful, huge buildings and very luxurious residential areas. Not good for your wallet, but pleasant enough to walk around. Right across the water from these skyscrapers is the boulevard known as the The Bund, old buildings dating back to the period of the English occupation of Shanghai. Quite a contrast!
The next day we had our most Western outing we ever had in China: we went to the Ikea!!! Of course we had the hotdogs with unlimited soda (5 RMB, single hotdog 3 RMB) as breakfast before we actually entered the store. The stuff at Ikea in China is almost identical to the things they have in Dutch Ikeas, so that wasn't very special. The best part of the visit was the lunch (Swedish meatballs of course...). Watching Chinese people trying to eat Western food is awesome. Scoping up an entire schnitzel with their fork, biting a piece off and putting the schnitzel back on their plate. Or they lift up a chicken wing, put it entirely in their mouths, slowly chew off the meat while the bone sticks out of their mouth and then spitting it back out on their fork... haha, great times! After that Shos found an H&M and went on a shopping spree and we concluded the night with a good, authentic Shanghainese meal in a restaurant recommended by the care taker of a public toilet :-)
The last day we went to the Shanghai Museum, a four story building dedicated to Chinese historical art. Although interesting, it was too much of the same and couldn't keep me inspired for too long. In the afternoon we took a train to Nanjing where we arrived at around 20.00, just in time to join the festivities of the Lantern Festival (15 days after Chinese New Year). The streets were crowded with people walking around, buying food and little things such as balloons or glow-in-the-dark devil ears... And it was actually arranged very well. The police blocked several streets, turning them into one-way streets, forcing people to follow the crowds and walk around in loops instead of running into each other! Good Job Nanjing!!!

The next day we went to Sun Yat-Sen's mausoleum located in a nature park on a mountain just east of town. And here Shos and I realized that we have been to too many Chinese sights, temples and parks... although it was pretty nice to see and read about the things Sun Yat-Sen has done, it was too Chinese in a way that most of it was glorified and made to look like the Communist Party and Sun Yat-Sen agreed on "everything". No big deal, but very, very, very Chinese ;-)
And Saturday we flew back. So now we're back in Kunming, cleaning our apartment, enjoying Yunanese food and seeing our friends again. This week I also start working again and start Chinese classes! More on that the next time!

Zaijian,
Ruud

Back in China: Xiamen & Hangzhou

Amazing differences between the East and West of China...

In Bangkok nothing special happened. The only real fun thing we did was paying a visit to a restaurant called "Tony Roma's" (sounds like a pizza joint, but is a ribs and steak place). According to my sister they have the best ribs ever there, so of course I had to try. And I must say that they were delicious. The rest of the night my stomach was a little upset, not because the food was bad but probably because I'm not used to eating those amounts of meat anymore ;-) But is was definitely worth the "splurge"!!!
On Wednesday we flew back to China, Xiamen to be precise. Before we took off a flight crew member informed us that there was an accident with our bag: a bottle of whisky had been broken... Nothing we could do about it at that time, but we were wondering how bad it would be. It took AirAsia over three hours to get us to Xiamen and when we arrived we were unpleasantly "surprised" that not one, but both our bottles of Laos Tiger Whisky were broken. The entire bag including its contents smelled like whisky. After some arguing with the ground personnel of the airport we agreed to a 100RMB compensation for laundry (doesn't seem like much, but it covers expenses in China).
And the other "surprise" might even have been worse: it was f*$#ing COLD!!! We were used to approx. 30 degrees (Celsius that is) for over a month and in Xiamen it was a mere 5 degrees... We took buses to the train station to secure a sleeper ticket to Hangzhou for Friday and then needed to find a place to crash for the night (it was already 22.30). We ended up in some Chinese lady's apartment that had been converted into a cheap hotel. Kind of sketchy, but it got us through the first night with only "minor" disturbances ;-)
The second day we switched hotel and explores Xiamen. The cool thing about Xiamen is that we both thought it was an updated version of Kunming. Not too big, some really nice places to hang out, still that real Chinese touch, but way more modern! Most of that day we spent trying to buy plane tickets back to Kunming (which is a little harder than in Western countries, especially when you wan to do it online) and checking out the university area. The last day we made a trip to Gulangyu, an island 3 minutes away from the mainland. The cool thing is that there are no cars on the island and it has beaches!!! Seriously a nice place to spend a day. At 22.14 our night train to Hangzhou departed and we said goodbye to Xiamen.
Hangzhou is a lot bigger than Kunming and/or Xiamen. It also seemed to be a lot more modern than either of those. Supposedly it is a big tourist attraction for Chinese because of the "original" West Lake can be found here. And it has to be said: the lake and its surroundings are beautiful. The downside of being there at this time of the year: it is cold!! At several places you could still see piles of snow... In the afternoon we visited Julia, who we met in Laos. After a great home cooked meal and lots of talking we went back to our hostel, watched a movie and called it the night. The next day we took an "early" train to Shanghai and not just any train, but one of the new "bullet trains". They are a big improvement from the traditional trains here, but to call them bullet trains... The highest speed we reached was 171 km/h, nice but not that exciting.

More about Shanghai in the next post. However the first impressions can be given relatively quickly: awesome city!!!
Just a few more days of traveling around and then we'll be back home in Kunming!

Groetjes uit Oost-China,
Ruudje en Shos

Myanmar

Nice people, decent food, great country side and so on...
Too bad they have such a stupid government!!!

Sorry for the delay in updating the blog, but I was unable to add pictures in Myanmar so I decided to wait a couple of more days. The trip was great. After an uneventful flight I arrived in a very wet Yangon. During the flight I met Tim, an American student, who had exactly the same time as me to spend in Myanmar, so we decided to travel together. At the airport we took a taxi into town (paid for by Tim in US$) in order to exchange money.
And that right away is the most irritating thing about traveling in Myanmar, the money!!! The official banks only exchange foreign currency for terrible rates (i.e. 1 US$ = 400 Kyats), so you have to deal with people on the street and markets (a rate of approx. 1200-1250 Kyats per US$). Besides being plain sketchy, Burmese people only accept crisp new bills. No stains, folds, little tears or anything... Tourist fees (like the US$ 10 to enter Bagan) have to be paid in these new US$ bills as well and it seems that when you want to pay in Kyats they use a random and ridiculous exchange rate!
Oh well, after getting annoyed by that a couple of times you just accept it as one of the flaws of country dictated by a bunch of assholes in a hidden, "secret" government city.

Then the good things :-) The highlight for me was the three day trek from Kalaw to Inle Lake. Tim, I and a French guy called Michael hired a guide for three days to take us via a bunch of villages to the lake. The guide (called Kyi), a chef (called Chef, for our food), all the food and the accomodation for US$ 8 pppd. The hike was great, the people we met were amazing and the weather was optimal (maybe even a little hot). No more talking about it, just take a look at the pictures!




After the hike and trip over the lake, we were supposed to be picked up by a bus. But that bus thought we were somewhere elso so totally skipped us :-( A few "stressful" moments, a couple of phone calls and a 45 minute taxi ride we caught our bus after all. It simply waited for us :-)

That bus took us to Mandalay. A decent, small city that has a lot of history to offer but in itself is not that spectacular. I spent one day walking around the city and together with Michael hired bicycles the next day to go to some towns around Mandalay. We visited Saiging Hill and Amarapura, where they have world's longest teak wood bridge. Sounds great, but is also more a tourist thing than anything else.


Not that Mandalay was bad, but I was really looking forward to go to the temples of Bagan. The slow boat went on the wrong days and the tourist boat was a rip-off, so I took a bus. A very long, bumpy and hot 10 hour bus ride later I arrived in Nyuang U, the town where many backpackers stay when they visit Bagan. Bagan... well, to be honest, it did not fulfill my expectations. It is an amazing sight when you stand on top of a temple and all you can see is a plain with nothing but more temples, but that is it... Not as impressive as Angkor, because the temples are way smaller. And all of the smaller temples look alike. But probably I am also a little spoiled when it comes to temples, so that adds to my not being too enthousiastic about Bagan.


After Bagan it was time to head back to Yangon. After one whole day of sightseeing I was glad I did not have to stay there any longer. Big city, few places of interest, so only worth a short stay.

Myanmar is great and I would not mind going back there, especially to the less traveled parts. The people are amazingly friendly and it is incredibly cheap (US$ 2-7 for a single room with good breakfast). Totally worth another visit and I would recommend it to everyone. On Tuesday I flew back to Shoshannah in Bangkok, but more on that and our China trip will follow soon!!!

Ciao,
Ruudje