China

I arrived at Chengdu Aiport, and according to plan I was supposed to be picked up by the coordinator for the Panda Project I was going to. There were noone... Not a soul was speaking English so I had to figure out a way to get to the hostel on my own. I'm glad I have my female intuition, or whatever it's called... I had a feeling something was up because my contact in Sweden, from Goxplore, (used to be Work and Travel company), wich is the travel agency I went with, was not responding to my mail (at least not until I was already in China...). Feeling that something was up, I was smart enough to have a picture in my phone with the address in Chinese caracters. I couldn't find any buses or so, but I managed to find a taxi. So I just showed him the picture and got were I was supposed to be eventually. Although I think it really sucked that I had to pay for it myself, when I was told being picked up and transportation was included... Later on I talked to the coordinator about not being picked up, and she said she was waiting for me at the airport the day before I came, and that she was informed by my Swedish contact that I was arriving that day. I checked my sent e-mails, and I know for a fact I wrote the correct date...
I got to the hostel, a really nice hostel. I met some other people there who were also a part of the Panda Project. We were all invited to a welcome-dinner that night, but I was told by the other volonteers (not anyone who was in charge or anything, wich I though was a bit weird) that it was cancelled. So me and my new room mates went out for dinner. We went to see if we could find anything Chinese, however, we could only find weird stuff. So we ended up at this really fancy thai restaurant right next to the hostel, with amazing and cheap food.
After that we took a taxi to a night market. That place was really cozy, with lanterns and a little lake.

The next day we met up with our coordinator for brunch. We all had noodle soup, you could choose between chicken(not spicy), beef(super spicy) or vegetable. I chose chicken and I got mine first. I was really hungry so I ate all of mine before most other even got their food. I thought it was delicious! There was bones and stuff in it, but didn't think about it, I just ate around it, spitting it out. I was later told there was brain in it... Dammit... But I'm so glad I didn't notice until after I was finished!
We did some sightseeing, and in the People's Park we saw a lot of cool things. In one place we could see a lot of notes hanging around, and mostly old people reading them. This was some sort of match making ads, where parents would write something about their son or daughter and match them with another piece of paper, and send them on a blind date.

A blind date for you son perhaps?

We also came across a group of people just dancing and having fun to loud music. This was really nice to see, I wish we could have this sort of thing in Sweden, but we are too shy for that...

We came back to the hostel later on and most of us decided a beer would be nice. It really was, altough I enjoyed the company more than the watery beer. Maybe that's why they call it snow beer?

A few days later we took a couple of buses that took us to Ya'an and the Panda Base.
We were told that we would be able to hold a baby panda, and it would cost 1500 RMB for 20 seconds, or 3000 for 3 minutes. Really expensive, and why is it not included? But I thought, when am I ever going to hold a baby panda if not now? And when I'm at it I might as well do the whole three minutes.
But this is the thing I am sooooo disappointed about. All of a sudden it was only possible to do the 20 second thing, and so I paid 1500. Still they told us we could HOLD the panda for 20 seconds. But then when it all was paid and we got ready to see the baby panda, dressing up in plastic gowns and glovs, they told us we weren't allowed to hold the panda. We could sit next to it and pet it, and we got 15 seconds. That is 1000 bloody RMB per SECOND!!! For sitting next to a panda?! They had me fooled...

Not worth it.

The project itself was pretty fun, and really opened my eyes for how great volunteering is, however, I will never go with Goxplore again. So many things were described totally wrong in the letter we got. I talked to others at the project who had been volunteering before, and they said it usually is way better. And I was absolutely not the only one feeling disappointed.

Me and another girl were taking care of two pandas: Tong Tong, a 9 year old boy, and Wang Jia, a 5 or 6 year old girl. Both were very cute, but had totally different personalities. Tong Tong is very shy and afraid of anything that makes a sound. When he eats, he just grabs the food and turns away, eating on a distance. Wang Jia is the opposite. She is really lazy and if you feed her small bits of the special cake she can lick your hand. You can pet her, although do it when the keepers are looking away, they are more nervous than the panda... She is very ticklish under her feet! Both pandas come when you call for them, unless they were asleep. 

Tong Tong

Our day started with breakfast at 8am. Then at 8.40 cleaning and a quick feeding. We were cleaning up poop and old bamboo, and giving them fresh. Three times a day we just prepared food and fed them. Preparing the food included weighing and cutting the special panda cake, that looked and smelled just like normal bread. Two times a day they got an apple and a carrot.
Some nights we had Chinese lessons, or calligraphy or paper cutting. We made our own dumplings two times during my three weeks.

Our awesome uniforms.

Is it readable?

The first weekend in China we went for a little adventure! First we went to Leshan Giant Buddha, which a little book told me was the biggest Buddha statue in the world. I learned that it is normal in this culture to cut lines and to really push to get further in... Really made me crazy, but eventually I too pushed... So it only took an hour to go down the stairs to the statue... I also learned that if you go to a restaurant, you don't order one or two dishes per person, like we do at home. One dish is, according to my understandings, for everyone at the table. So you order a few dishes for the whole table and everyone shares. We didn't know this, so we ordered one or two things per person, and ended up with food for like 12 people. We were 4... 

The head of Leshan Giant Buddha.

Way too much food. But tasty!

The next day I woke up with the worst stomach ever! Our plan was to walk up the Emei montain to a place where there were a lot of monkeys. With me being so ill, it took nearly five hours... That was NOT the best day of my life. When we finally got there, at first we couldn't find any monkeys. But we kept on going and after a while we saw loads of them. But then we got so scared we just wanted to go away! They adviced us to use a bamboo stick for own protection, wich I at first thought was silly. But I am glad for the stick I had, it came in handy a lot. The monkeys were really mean, and stealing stuff. When you turned your back they would run and jump on your back to try and get some food. I was jumped but didn't have any food. However my reaction was to bend over, and so my backpack fell down and kinda pushed the monkey off my shoulders. We saw one person who had been bitten and was bleeding. We also saw a monkey bleeding, wich in a way made me feel sorry for them at the same time as I really think they are mean creatures...

Stealing monkey.

We walked down and got to a parking lot, where we took a bus as far up the mountain as possible. It was getting dark so we decided to stay the night at a hostel/hotel. The next morning we got up unbelievably early. We walked up stairs again, and as I was still really ill, this was hell. I couldn't keep up with the other girls, so we met at the cable car terminal. After queuing for what felt like a life time we took the cable car to, well, almost the top. After that, more walking up stairs waited. We came to see the sunrise on top of the Emei mountain, and the other girls were worried we would miss it, so they ran off, while I was quite happy to just make it alive, however long time it took. But guess what? I made it in time for the sunrise! It was really cool to see the sun rise through the clouds. And I am so proud of myself for doing it, I can't believe I managed to get there while being so ill! Yay me! And, although I don't know if it was just me, but isn't the air a bit thinner up there too?

The sun, squeezing through the clouds.

Then it was time to take a whole lot of buses and complicated stuff like finding the right bus station. But eventually we did it. At this point I was sick and tired of all the people that were taking photos of me. Really annoying! And the spitting inside and outside, and the diggin in the nose and picking their ears and the loud farts and what not... It's sure to say our cultures are waaay different!

There was a zoo just behind the Panda Base, and you would think it would be great to see tigers and bears and birds...
But it wasn't. I've never in my life seen such malnourished and badly treated animals. The enclosures were too small, without any grass in sight. They were in weird angles so the animals couldn't even stand up straight, and it made it really hard to run or walk. Everything was out of concrete.
If you know just a little bit about elephants, you know they are very smart and have emotions. You would also know to never keep an elephant by it self. They did just that. Nothing to entertain itself with, no friend and no space.
The ostriches were all picking their feathers, wich they do when they are stressed, wich indicates how miserable they are. Some of them were even bleeding.
There was one lonely fox in one of the enclosures, you could tell he wasn't mentally healthy. He was running in this circle round and round, and by the look of the trail he left, he'd be running in the same circle for months. At least. With nothing better to do.
They had snakes too. It's been a few weeks since I was there, so there is a risk they are dead by now. That's how bad it was. A snake, maybe a meter long was cramped into a mini box, maybe 15x7x5 centimeters. It just about fit inside. No space to move at all. And there were heaps of them. All in small boxes.
Some of the big cats looked so skinny it scared me. In the park you can buy meat on a stick to feed the tigers and lions with. You just stick it through the fence. Seems like a cool idea, but if you think about it, how can they control what the animals eat? How can you know they get the right nutrition? Do they rely on the costumers to feed the animals, and is that why they look so slim? Why doesn't anybody do something about this? Why doesn't anybody care? Everyone can see the animals are mistreated! This is really pissing me off!

... and what happened to his face?

And, because I don't want to end this update with being pissed off, can someone tell me if this makes any sense translated to Chinese?! I bought this t-shirt because I thought it was hilarious!

There is something that doesconnect very fundamentally to the human psyche, in a way. FROG NUMBER 

The first time in Hong Kong

It's time for a little change on this blog. That's right, I am now writing in English, or, trying to at least. I think I speak English well, however writing (and spelling) is something completely different for me... I wish I could get this computer to spellcheck... 
I am a very honest person, sometimes a bit too honest. I'm also a very emotional person, wich is not always a good combination. 
This blog was censured in China, so I'll just post it all now, piece by piece...

So, I just came back "home" (I am not sure what to call this place, it's where I live and grew up, but I don't really feel at home here...). Leaving Australia, and especially Melbourne, who I grew very fond of, was heart breaking, and brought me to tears many times. Despite my mood I managed to enjoy my few days in Hong Kong.

The first night in Hong Kong I was surprised by how difficult it was to find my hostel, but with a lot of luck I managed to find it. I went to a night market and was overwhelmed by how many people who live in this city. I stayed at the Chungking Mansions, wich contains a lot of different hostels, markets, businesses and god knows how many people. My hostel was on the 13th floor, and it took forever to get there, since the queue to the elevator was very long. One thing I learned the hard way, was that hostels do not give you any toilet paper...

The day after, I met a dad and a son who were travelling together, from New Zealand. They were very nice, and let me hang with them for the whole day. We took the star ferry to Hong Kong Island and after a cool bus ride and a lot of walking we ended up by the Botanical Gardens. It was very pretty, and in the middle of it all they had monekys and other animals.

Later that night we went to the night market, and then took the train back to Hong Kong Island. There they celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival, with loads of lights and lanterns, and it just looked amazing!

Me at the Mid-Autumn Festival

A few blocks away we found the Tai Hang Fire Dragon in full action! This was a dragon made out of incense burning and smoking, while the people making it move was running (!) around with it very close to the crowd. Everyone was happy and cheering for the dragon. It all created a very cool atmosphere.
This experience was all thanks to a very nice lady, who saw us looking a bit lost, and just told us that if we wanted to see the dragon, she knew a shortcut, but we would have to be quick. So we more or less ran after her and got a good spot.

Tai Hang Fire Dragon

The day after I decided to visit the Big Buddha statue. After a few rides on the metro I arrived to one of the longest queues I've seen in my life. The cable car was out of service, so the queue was leading to buses that went up the mountains on a serpent road. In the queue I met a nice girl who showed me her big plans for the day. I took notes, since I didn't know much about what to do in Hong Kong. The Big Buddha was amazing, and the view magical. It was very hot and a lot of steps up, so I was sweating like crazy! My white t-shirt was now pink wherever it touched my bra...

Before going up all those steps...

Later, at lunch time, I tried a new thing, Rice Pizza. It was just like a normal pizza, but instead of a crust it was sticky rice. I had chicken and mango on mine. Delicious!

Rice Pizza!

I went to a place called 10,000 Buddhas. Apparently there are more than 10,000 Buddhas there, but I wasn't counting. For a girl who really enjoy Buddha statues (you should see my room) this was really remarkable. They were all in gold, at least the ones I could see. I was a little late, and since they closed the tempel I could "only" see a few thousands... At one time a monkey, with a baby hanging on, jumped out of the bushes and scared the living crap out of me. It looked vicious so I ran away scared.

Do you see how evil it looks?! Picture taken from a safe distance...

10,000 Buddhas, both male and female...

After this, I took the metro to see the Nan Lian Gardens. A truly beautiful place, especially in dawn.

Nan Lian Gardens

Before it was getting too dark I went to the fish market. Not the most interresting thing I've seen. I didn't like it, not because it was boring, but because of the way they were treating animals. Too small cages, fish sold in plastic bags too small and without any air coming in. The fish at the market makes the fish in our aquarium seem like spoiled brats...

Fish Market

Just in time, I went to the Avenue of Stars, just by the coast of Kowloon. I saw the light show that people had been talking about. The avenue was pretty, but it must have been the worlds most boring light show.

The Light Show...

At this point I was a bit stressed out, it had been a long hot day, and I got a lot done. But the typhoon warning was not good news. My flight was almost cancelled, and that night I had no idea of if I would go to the airport or not in the morning. But luck strikes again, and the difference of one hour would be a big deal. All flights from 12 were cancelled, and my flight was at 11! Lucky me!



To be continued...