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Plan Your First Trip to China
So you have decided to visit China?! Yeyy (little dance move)! So here are a few tips to help plan your first trip to China from someone who has just planned it all from scratch, no agencies used and with that I saved a lot of money. Now, it can be overwhelming to decide where to go. China is the 4th largest country in the world, with 22 provinces and 5 autonomous regions. It’s so much more than just the Great Wall (and that is already pretty awesome on its own by the way). FIRST: you need to ask yourself a few questions: HOW LONG ARE YOU PLANNING TO GO? China…
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The Language of the Heart – Yangshuo
Sitting on small wooden stools, the silence was only broken by the sound of heavy rain and the vigorous brushes the woman gives to the soaked clothes in the red round plastic container. The husband astutely maneuvers the knife removing the tip and the stringy bit from the side of the green beans, separating those into a different container. Their son, maybe 6 or 7 years old, oblivious to us, holds a pencil in his hand, scribbling mandarin characters on his dusty notebook, determined to finish his homework. The silence isn’t disturbing at all. It only gives space to contemplate the question “how could they trust us, such strangers, and…
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Stairway to heaven? Or Longji’s Rice Terraces?
Gold, brown and green collage of steps mold the mountain wall, forming terraces covered in shallow muddy water. Chinese farmers scarcely stood across the terraces, feet in the water, round pointy hats on their heads, concentrating on the task of planting rice. So picturesque! The scenery I had only seen in paintings was now a feast to my brown eyes. We were in Longji’s Rice Fields, 2½ hour drive from Guilin. Longji refers to several ancient villages spread across Longsheng County. We visited two of them: the Ping’an and the Jinkeng Dazai villages. Hiking up the mountain was (not) easy. The air was hot and humid. My damp dress was…
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17 Hilarious Facts about the Chinese
When you go to a country culturally so different with an open mind, the things you come across can be part of the fun of traveling. From north to south, the Chinese showed me some generosity but also challenged my sense of what is “normal”. So here I present you 17 hilarious facts about the Chinese. 1 – Chinese STARE a lot at white and black people! On the bus in Shangri-La, a man sits at a 90º angle to turn his head another 90º back to stare at me and my friend for like 90% of the journey. It was rather uncomfortable, since we were sitting right behind him.…
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Fenghuang – Life around the River
The smell of noodles and fried food woke me up just before 7am. Climbing through the balcony, the life outside our bedroom was invading our sleep. My first thought was: where am I?! Slowly the memory of the day before returns. Fenghuang. A remote town located in the west-south province of Hunan, China. As much as I love noodles, the whole combination of smells put me off breakfast. I am the kind a girl who is happy with a bowl of milk and cereal (or toast and hot-chocolate, or smoothie and pancakes or …………). Chinese breakfast is like lunch to me. We arrived in Fenghuang the day before at midday,…
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Tianmen Mountain – Zhangjiajie
Even with my eyes closed I could feel it. An emptiness of everything and a simultaneous filling of nothing. Walking as far as the edge goes, I opened my arms to embrace the nothing and the everything. The breeze kissed my cheeks and messed up my hair. With the Tianmen Mountain behind me, saying I was walking on top of it wasn’t quite the truth. In fact, I was following a path built on the cliff face of the mountain, with metal railing painted and sculptured to look like wood. At 1400 meters high, initially it felt like walking on the clouds, but when they disappeared, the houses were like…
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“Avatar” Mountains exist… in China – Zhangjiajie
We climbed 2000 steps to the top of the mountain to get an “unbelievable view”. Well, all there was to see was fog and Chinese people taking selfies in the fog. Then it started to rain, but in a way it made me believe that the skies were mad at someone somewhere. My rain proof jacket was letting me down (and wet). We found shelter in a KFC at the end of the path, asked for hot chocolate and were served with hot milk. After several failed attempts to say/mimic chocolate in Chinese, we turned to our hot cups of milk and tried to sink our frustrations in it. Well,…
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Hanging Temple and Yungang Grottoes – Datong
Hanging Temple When I read “hanging temple” I didn’t really expect 1500 year old wood sticks sustaining a 40 rooms temple built into a mountain cliff. Scary? Yes and yet I am standing inside it! This is the Xuan Kong Si Hanging Temple, 65km from Datong, in China. To me, architecture is yet a mystery art when mixed with other beliefs, such as religion. Over 1500 years ago, a genius monk hoping to get some peace and quiet decided that the ideal place to build a temple would be, not on the top of the mountain (it can snow), not on the valley (for the risk of floods), but in…
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Night train from Beijing to Datong
Eighteen minutes past midnight. Night train from Beijing to Datong. The lights go off and an awkward silence settles in while everybody curls up in their soft beds trying to calm down the excitement of the journey ahead. Well…I am feeling this way, at least. The only Chinese person in this four-bed compartment is already asleep by the time I write this, no excitement, just another journey to work perhaps. Did I say soft bed? It isn’t soft at all. Even my feet are softer. (Yes, I just squeezed my feet to get the comparison accurate). But they provide us with a nice soft pillow and a duvet. The air-conditioning…
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24 hours in Beijing
Walking down a street looking for a place to have dinner, music attracts us into this park like honey attracts a bear. Without any warning a party was imminent, we were upon what looked like a middle age Chinese street club. People dance in pairs in this improvised dance floor at sun down to the music that echoes from speakers installed on top of a motorbike parked in the middle of the square. A quick screen of the place made me realize there were no westerners here, only my friend and I. I didn’t know how our presence was going to be digested by the Chinese people. We had been in…
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The truth about the Great Wall of China
Notice: the following post has spoilers! Do you know that feeling of sadness blended in disappointment when you find out that Santa Claus does not exist?! I believed it for 7 years when another kid in school unveiled the sad truth. First I refused to believe him and later at home I asked my parents who confirmed it. I will never forget that day. Twenty years later I experienced that same feeling again. I was happily hiking the Great Wall of China when someone told me that it cannot be seen from Space. It’s a myth. I felt my thoughts crumble like a biscuit. WHAT?!?! Apparently it is too thin…
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Lençóis, a colourful little village – Brazil
“COBRA!!” (snake) – someone shouted. Everyone turned to where the voice came from, then followed the eyes of the woman shouting, to then find a red snake with black and white rings, around 70cm long. I have just landed at the airport of Lençois, around 400 km west from Salvador, state of Bahia in Brazil. This airport is so small! It only operates 2 flights per day twice a week and we basically wait at the door of the airport, while we watch the men taking our luggage from the airplane and placing it in a cart to then hand it directly in our hands. It is while waiting for…
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10 Things to do in Rio de Janeiro
I must confess! The sassy city of Rio de Janeiro has conquered a place in my heart like not many cities have done so far. To start, it has everything I love about a city: warm sandy beaches, several mountains to climb for a view, romantic parks, relaxed coffee-shops and trendy boutique shops. But it is so much more then just that: it’s the beat of the music, the rhythm on the streets, the fresh taste of the coconut water sold in every hut by the beach, the warmth of it’s people’s heart. 5 days weren’t enough, well I don’t think I could ever get enough of this. And you…
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Copacabana Beach, hut 143.
“In your country, people never give you anything for free?” Do they?! – People from Portugal are friendly, kind, but the general rule is if someone is too generous they want something from you that you might not want to give in return. This rule becomes stronger being a girl traveling in a foreign country, on my own. Yet, this stranger, afro-brazillian, chubby and sweaty, stands hands on knees leaning over with the friendliest smile in his face when he invites me to take a seat in one of the chairs his hut is renting, but for free. Here, at Copacabana beach, in Rio de Janeiro, I was quite happy lying…
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Porto de Galinhas
When you visit a new place, do you ever wonder why it’s called that?! Porto de Galinhas literally means Chicken’s Port. But why? Back in the 17th century countries all over the world started abolishing slavery. Sadly, Brazil was the last country forbidding it completely with the implementation of the Aurea Law in May 1888. However this only gave them reasons to do it clandestinely, selling slaves for higher prices. The slaves were then hidden under the chicken cages in the ships traveling from Africa and arriving here. This area was not very well known at this time which made this practice easy to get away with. The password “there are new…
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