Taiwan-wun-wuurrn

Now it's been almost two weeks since I came back from Taiwan, so I guess it's about time I put it into writing. I've been insanely "busy" ever since, though... Had a couple of days in HK after I came back, to see the last people before everyone left, then to the Philippines to Dive, then to Manila for Christmas with my beautiful Tita Maia, and now I am in Boracay, the party-paradise, apparently. Back to all that in another post!

It was great to see Morten in Taipei. We had a really nice hotel room, although we shared a queen-bed and the same blanket - cozy cozy, had a really nice dinner, and went out to see Taipei the next day... Which, back to the usual with Morten, meant that we went looking for cool, trendy stores.. In Taiwan, unfortunately, this means: "Sorry sir, not your size. This from Korea/Japan/Taiwan"... And that's even before I took out anything I liked... 

We took the HSR - High Speed Rail - to Taichung. 250km in less than an hour!! Morten's friend, Blueman (it's true!) picked us up at the HSR station and took us to a CRAZY market... Mong Kok/Ladies' Market x 100... We had some really good food, and just browsed the market for craziness... 

Spent the night in Mortens BIG appartment - I even had my own room for a change - and the next day went to pick up the soccer-mom car at his office, that we'd be touring the country in. It was pretty crazy to see the place he works and lives. That was very rural and very local, and I am VERY impressed... (There, I said it, Morten) 

We took the car and drove south to Tainan where we had lunch, a HUGE cup of green tea with vanilla ice cream and saw some sights.. Nothing too interesting, but at least we were cultural. The important thing was to take pictures, make the V sign and point at everything. Ah, and hi-five the little waving cats outside the stores... They are waving to costumers to bring in the money, apparently. It's japanese, don't ask.

After Tainan we went to Kaosiung, the second biggest city in Taiwan, to spend the night. We had a really nice dinner with a tabletop BBQ and hotpot. I don't think we had planned on it, but it ended up a late night... 

We met Chi at a bar, and hung out with him for some hours.. When the bar closed, we stayed another hour, and then went to bed. Chi got our hotel number, so he called in the morning and we hung out and took care of our hangover together, while Chi showed us some of the city. 

Had a long drive back to Taichung, where Morten dropped me at the HSR, which I took back to Taipei, so I could catch my flight back monday morning.

All in all, Taiwan is a crazy place... They ride their scooters crazier than we do our bikes in Denmark.. On sidewalks, in the opposite direction, in markets, in basements... 

The dogs wear shoes and coats, the bars have girls hired to talk to the guys so they don't feel lonely, and an open bar costs DKK60 - USD15, it's impossible to get a normal breakfast, they have "breastfeeding rooms" in the trainstaions, and as can be seen above, waiting zones for women during the night... But the place is cool, and I'd really like to go back and explore it more!

The Name of the Game...

Procrastination...

But I feel like it's excused. Last exam is coming up in approximately 4 hours, and that will end this semester. It's kind of an anti-climax to be honest. The effort during the semester has not been the greatest, and this has probably been the shortest exam-period of my entire life... It's lasted just a little more than 10 days. Usually, ending a semester is a relief - you can relax for a couple of weeks or months, and not think too much of what's coming up, not having a bad conscience.
This semester however has not been particularly hard, so it's not as if I'll be relaxing more after it's done that I did during... On the contrary, I'm actually going home to do a lot of hard work, which I'm looking very much forward to. But I sure will miss this place and these people - more later, in my next post!

Further, I've had only a feint idea as to what to expect wrt. exams, so it has been hard to study. For example, the emphasis on theories out here is practically non-existant, and it is the facts that matters... As an example can be mentioned a question in my Financial Management exam yesterday: "What has Mr. xxx estimated as the average stock market return over the past 10 years?" 6.5 , 8.9 , 10.4 or 14.5 .... I randomly guessed on the answer sheet, and put "WTF?" next to the question... Why I am expected to waste my time on what some random dude has estimated the stock market to return, I don't know.

Exam today is in China, Hong Kong and the World Economy, which is definately more of a home-pitch to me. Once again though, I'm a bit concerned as to the expectations regarding my memory... Do they expect me to remember how much China's energy elasticity has increased over the past 10 years? If so, I may be screwed... I'm hoping for some critical thinking and analysis questions instead and I'll nail it.

So tonight, it'll probably be the horse races and a trip to Wan Chai afterwards... Tomorrow I'm going to see old buddy old pal, Morten, who's interning in Taiwan, so I'm flying to Taipei, staying there from thursday to friday and then on to Taichung where he lives, and hopefully also a trip to the beach down south... A little concerned about the temperature though... Not sure my body-temperature at the moment is fit for the beach if it's only 25 degrees... I'm currently in a thick, woolen sweater, and it's 15C...

In other news, Kanye West's new album is banging!



And some pictures....

The Coffee-lady has added me on Facebook... 

I don't think my mom got the point of this picture... 

Best steak... Ever - or, at least in competition with M.A.S.H.

DKK75.... 

Lunch with the boys in the canteen... 

Dear Qatar Airways: Have mercy!

The Northern Capital

Ugh... Surprised me that my last post was about travelling to the source, also known as China... Especially because this one will be too...!

On top of all the exam-and-assignment-stress that I have had (well, hardly, but there's been and will be quite a few of them...), and my mom visiting for a week to spoil me, I managed to squeeze in a trip to Beijing this weekend! Great decision! 

We were a group of 5 - and represented all the Scandinavian countries: on the first picture below, from the left: Gustav (Sweden), myself, Amadeus (Sweden) Eirik (Norway) and last, Henri (Finland)

So, Beijing: That place is SO much different from Shanghai, which is not a far shot from Hong Kong, thinking about it. Beijing is HUGE - 20m people, 2m less than Shanghai, but the city is mainly low-rise buildings, which means it covers a laaaarge area. Thank God that a taxi-ride has an average cost of 20 yuan (=DKK 16, USD 3).

The schedule was pretty tight. We arrived at the hostel late Thursday night, checked in (paid CNY 81 = DKK 66 = USD 12 for three nights...), had a couple of beers and went to bed. We got up at 6.30am to meet with a group going to the Great Wall... 

When in Rome...

Trespassing on a guardtower with a couple of beer! 

Chinese unemployment policies: Rake the forest! It's full of leaves!

Power-napping is healthy!

It was a huge experience, but also sort of "of course"-ish... It looks like it does on pictures, and it was hard to be surprised. That does not mean it was not beautiful, impressive and a tad bit intimidating to be there... It's a BIG construction! And a very useless one too! It's 8,800km long, if my memory serves me right, and it may have had twice the length - they think some of it has disappeared. An 8,800km long wall is one thing, but building it in something resembling the Alps, and crossing the highest peaks is a whole other thing! Insane! 

Coming home, we showered and got ready to go out, while taking a stop at the Olympic Park, to see the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. 

It was freezing cold, and we were starving, so we didn't see much else. Would have been nice to go inside and see it, but that's not this time. 

Dinner was very nice! We went to a place that serves dishes from some province in China, I think it was in the North... Had a funny, sweet yellow rice wine, which was poured over dried sour plums... Very good! Won't bore you with the rest of the menu (crabs, whole shrimps, sweet bbq ribs - sorry!)

Soo... Accidentally we got drunk and went to a club called MIX. It was supposed to be the best club in Beijing, at least according to the locals, and it was a very strange experience. Club was HUGE, but dancefloor was tiny. People are sitting around at their own tables or lounges, playing dice and drinking whiskey/green tea. It's very hard to get in contact with anyone, because noone speaks english, and the DJ sings along with the songs that he usually only plays 30-60 seconds of... Nevertheless, we got invited to a VIP lounge, where we played some dice and drank some whisky. The people said that they wanted to practice their english - then they were gone again, and we were alone in the lounge... Very weird!

Next morning was a bit rough, nonetheless, after an egg/bacon/beans/toast breakfast with some good cuppa joe's, we headed for Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Now, Tiananmen Square, that is the source of all evil and all good in China - that, and the provincial governments... 

Both places are HUGE... As in MASSIVE! Tiananmen is 900x500m big, and the Forbidden City is slightly larger! Due to the smog, it was not even possible to see from one end of the square to the other! The avenues surrounding the Square are 8-9 lanes in EACH direction... 

The buildings in themselves were impressive as well, and so was the history behind, with which I will not bore you! It was however a shame that it was not possible to get into the buildings and see the smaller details! 

After this, we walked to Hutong district, which was supposed to be a more "local" district, with 1-storey buildings and a lot of soul... It was more of a tourist-hell, with the usual massage-offers (but this time from old men instead of young women), fake watches, commercialized communist t-shirts and posters, hats, scarfs, fake leather-ware and so on... We had a terrible lunch at a thai-place, which was a shame, considering all the good food Beijing has to offer... All in all, a combination of being tired and not the most charming place in the world made it a bit of an uh, bad experience... 

So we went home and slept a couple of hours, before going to the probably best roast "peking" duck place in the city. This was also something of an experience! Beautifully decorated restaurant, and they really tried their hardest, but it was like the last details were missing all the time! We had some really delicious food, good wine, beer and cocktails, and a lot of fun!

Once again, a rough night, which probably contributed to the fact that we (except for Amadeus), didn't get out of bed until 11am, resulting in a somewhat amputated sightseeing tour for the remaining four of us! 

So after a smooth taxi-ride/transit/flight/transit/bus-ride back to Uni, it was all over... Great trip, and so happy that I did it, and managed to squeeze it in between exams, assignments and other important stuff! 

And a couple of random pictures from the rest of the weekend:

We also visited my Beijing garage, unfortunately we were too drunk for a test-drive.

Molecule-Mojito... 

The Source

OK I'm late. I'm sorry and everything. And why? Don't know, not much is happening. Shanghai was a blast - a BLAST! We saw the expo, which was crazy amazing - and HUGE! The day we were there, there were 900.000 visitors, beating the previous record by 300.000 - the next day had 1,03m visitors... F***! Thing is, that place is so big that it didn't even feel overcrowded! Then again, we didn't queue up anywhere, and only went into the Scandinavian pavilions, since we had "privileged access" there.

Sad to say that the Danish pavilion was crap. We did have the little mermaid, but what fun is that when you can't climb (and touch) her?!?! And there was biking lanes with city-bikes (bycykler). But the display of Danish companies was horrible, especially compared to the Swedish and the Finnish. The Norwegian pavilion was just very cool, made as a wooden cabin, with trolls and shit inside! So, yeah... I HATE loosing, especially to Swedes!

The other touristattractions we saw in Shanghai included 1 skyscraper (477m at the 100th storey) and 1 underground store with copy-watches, bags and sunglasses... Oh, yeah, and 9 night-clubs/bars...
Also, I managed to loose my phone, again, in a taxi, again... This time I chased it two blocks, full speed, with arms flying... He didn't stop!

Pictures from above are taken from "The Bottle Opener" in the right hand side of pic.

Clubs in Shanghai are crazy, music is definitely better than what they play here in Hong Kong, and booze is cheaper. In sum, all 4 of us wants to go back to the source!

Have had a couple of midterms, and although I knew I didn't ace them, the results were worse than expected. Kind of annoys me, but considering the amount of time I spend studying, I guess it's OK...

Also, it's getting colder here... That means that, at the moment, it's between 17 - 22 centigrades, and I actually find myself wearing a sweatshirt and freezing... Terrible! I'm dreading DK in January!

Speaking of DK, I've actually also been feeling a bit homesick lately... Which annoys me. I've spent 4 weeks away from home when I was 11, spent 10 months in the States when I was 14, and travelled quite a bit, and never felt homesick as now, when I've been away for about 3 months, and am almost 24.. What the hell? I guess it's hubris, considering how much I wanted to get away from Denmark this summer, to something "bigger and more exiting"... Grass is always greener on the other side, I guess! And then I may have underestimated what friends, family, network, and my beloved homely apartment means for comfort... But that's part of travelling, being challenged, and learning what you appreciate, and what makes you comfortable and gives a "safe" and fulfilled feeling.

In other news, my mom is coming out in a little over a week, which I'm looking very much forward to. Will be great to have a little home coming to Hong Kong, and also showing my mom what life out here is like, and that it's really as weird and crazy as I'm trying to say on Skype, and in these lines - Oh shit, laundry! - well, and hopefully I can get treated to a nice birthday dinner, maybe with a big fat steak and a glass of wine!

Also, I'm realizing that I don't have all that much time left to get to see the things I wanna see around here so we'll see how much I have time for in the end. Crap... time for class, and I better go, cause if not, I guess I'm not entitled to complain about test scores...

A couple of miscellaneous shots for your viewing pleasure...

Thanks, buddy!

Confused? Yup!

Gambling starts early

Taxi's in Shanghai don't care!

If you fancy that?!

HK takes it's toll...

Laater!