Trip to Shiyan and Party Night

Yesterday I went to Shiyan with Georg and Anja. We ended up in some Karaoke bar and had quite some fun. Foreigners are quite unusual here so we the attraction of the night. We had some police officer, a singer and the bar owner sitting at our table in the end and most of our Vodka and food was paid for by the owner. They just wouldn't stop filling up our glasses again and again. We were pretty drunk when we finally left the place.
After getting some munchies at the 24h super market (they even had some German "Rote Bete") we went to one of the massage spots near by end got a relaying food and body massage - 12 Euro for all three of us. After that it was time to head back to our nice hotel room - also 12 Euro for all of us.

Here are quite a lot of photos of the night

Trip and Party with Georg and Anja

And some videos...

...crazy Chinese Jumping Game...


...dancing...


...dancing, dancing...


...Georg singing Chinese...


...more Karaoke by Georg...


...off to the polonaise!!!


And finally our hotel room

Calligraphy

I got some really nice Chinese Calligraphy especially made for me.
The first Chapter of the Tao Te Ching.
And I could even take a little video while the artist was writing it.



He even had the whole Tao Te Ching but it was just a little to big to hang in my place.

Chinese Toilette

The Chinese toilettes and toilettes habits are a bit different from the west.
Instead of a seat it's a squatting pan, basically a hole in the ground.
Here are two photos of one of the toilette and shower cabin at my school. These are in reasonable condition for Chinese standards.
 
 
There is also no toilette paper provided at public toilettes so it's a good idea to always carry some with you.

What has happened in Wudang so far

Just the train ride to here was a bit of an adventure. The first part from Shenzhen to Wuhan I had a sleeper, so I could get some sleep on the 12 hours over night journey. But the train from Wuhan to Wudang was full so I had to stand and sit on a little stool for most of the time. The people on the train were very interested in me. Unfortunately since I don't speak any Chinese yet I was quit hard to communicate. But they were all very nice and offered me food. When I ate my rice with chopsticks everybody was watching me. I almost felt a bit like an animal in a zoo.
When I arrived in Wuhan the whole train waved me good bye.
After I walked around the small town for a bit I sat down to just observe the street life. I group of foreigners came by and told me that they are students at the Kung Fu school in town. So they took me along to their school. The next day I joint their training and man that was quite the hard training for me. Lots of stretching, kicks and leg work. The next day I was so sore. But still I think I was a very good training and the master there is very good and pays a lot of attention to detail. But the city is quite noisy and so I decided to take the bus up the mountain to have a loo at the school there. They had their day off on that day so I could joint the training but I still decided to stay here. It is nice and quiet and the school is smaller.
Georg another German student here has already been here for 1.5 years and is going to say for a total of 3 years.
I walked up to the top of the mountain to have a look at all the Daoist temples there. I don't know how many stairs I walked up that day, but it must have been thousands. So the next day I was already quite sore when we started the training.
In the afternoon of my first day of training here we went to Shiyan (the next big city in the region) where some of the students gave a performance for the opening celebration of the website www.wudangshan.com. After the performance and a lot of talking we had a huge amount of food. And every few minutes some important person would come to our table and toast with us. We got back at around 7PM to some more training.
Today is my second day of training at this school and I just feel tired and sore.

The Chinese Government Firewall blocks my Blog so every time I wan to look at my own site I have to uses a website like anonymouse.org

Wudang

So I made it to Wudang!
After staying for two nights with my super welcoming couchsurfing family...
 
I went off to a 20 hours train ride to Wudang.
Here are the first snapshots of the Wudang Mountains.

Wudang

I will write a bit more about my experience here when I get some time.

Arrived in China

So I made it to the land of the Dragon!
Last night I arrived in Shenzhen Airport. There was quite a long wait for immigration but no problems to get in.
My Couchsurfing host family is so nice and welcoming. Simon picked me up at the airport even at that late hour and took me out to get some food. It was good to have a decent sheep after all that time at airports. Today Cathy will help me organise my train ticket to Wudang.
Such a wonderful hospitality!!!
First impression: A lot of people. I'm on the 14th level of an apartment building right now and all I can see from the window are more big apartment buildings. Well somewhere the 8 Million people in this city have to fit.

Cairns -> Darwin -> Singapore

Just a quick update from the Singapore Airport.
I had quite some time to kill in Darwin so I took a bus into town, but I wasn't that impressed.
In Singapore Airport I found a Restaurant promoting Vegan Food - good on them

In Singapore I found myself in the unfortunate situation that Tiger Airways doesn't check its passengers through so that I ended up in the public not the transit area. And there is nothing to do there.
After taking a bit of a nap at Starbucks I hooked up with two other travellers and went off to explore the city a bit. Quite interesting but I guess the big Asia Culture Shock will come when I get to Shenzhen.
Here are some random visual impressions of Singapore.
[Click on the photo to see more images]