Hong Kong and Macau with Ivano

From Yangshuo, we travelled via Guangzhou towarads our final destination Hong Kong. In Guangzhou, Ivano managed to get a room with his own sauna, which was fun using.

Since all of China was moving that week due to their national holiday, Hong Kong was packed. Yet, soaking in the atmosphere there was amazing. Such a melting pot, and yet with lots of greenery, skyscrapers that take your breath away next to a little buddhist temple. A real mixture of old and modern meeting nature. Also, it was lovely visiting high quality museums again. Lee (and Ivano) were both very happy in finding their colonial food products, such as Vegimite and Pickled Onions (both an aquired taste).

On our day out to Macau we took the ferry there, and Ivano was very generous (once again) treated us to a superb portugese meal in the old part of Macau called Taipi. There, one really feels like being in Southern Europe thanks to the lovely architecture and the many western faces. It was a very nice experience indeed! Afterwards, we went to one of the many casionos. Did you know that Macau has recently overtaken Las Vegas as the gambeling capital? Unbelieveable, but true. We preferred to spend our money on cocktails. Ivano had his best Bloody Mary yet. So far, so good. By 2 am we got very tired and wanted to take the ferry back. There is a 24-hour service, so we had decided not to book in advance to give us more flexibility. Arriving at the ferry terminal, we are told that all ferries are booked until 5.30 am. We were all close to passing out, but luckily Ivano kept a cool head, and asked if there wasn't any other way. And since it is [nearly] China, there was! Ivano bought the 4 VIP tickets that can only be sold together and treated us to the most luxiourious boat trip ever. Lee managed to sell the fourth ticket on to somebody who looked as if he had won (or lost?) a lot of money and wasn't bothered to spend another fortune on that ticket. Happy End!

Chinese New Year in Yangshuo with Ivano

We spent Chinese New Year ( February 18th) in Yangshuo, a little picturesque village close to Guilin. The fireworks lasted for a week and the dragon went around to every shop and restaurant to wish them good luck and prosperity... in exchange for a little cash, of course.

We particularly enjoyed our cooking course on top of a restaurant with a stunning view of the kasters.

Happy Chinese New Year to all of you: Good luck, happiness and prosperity (seems to be unseperable here in China). XIN NIAN KUAI LE! 新年快乐

International goodies from Ivano

Finally, our first guest got here and brought (nearly) all of the world's goodies with him: pralines (loads of them), around 50 sachets of soup and cheese sauce, vegetable stock, English books and magazines, curry paste and most of all: lentils - not only some of them, but around 5 kg! We were really overwhelmed and grateful by this late arrival of Father Christmas. Thanks, Ivano, that was super-generous of you! We hope our next guests read this and take you as their role-model:)...

Happy Valentine's Day

Dear all,

to commemorate the day, we first went to the one and only pizzeria in town. Afterwards, Lee took Johanna to a "whole-body-massage" place, where we both got a massage. While Lee was enjoying it, Johanna was in pain. If childbirth is anything like it, we're adopting:).

Talking of childbirth, we are amazed by how many of our friends are parents- to- be. CONGRATULATIONS to you, Nadine and Michael on your future baby girl, Jason and Gemma on a purely bread British one (Lee is jealous:)) and Johann and Irene on a new little Gentenaar! We're very happy for you all, and hope that everything continues to go well.

Visitors are coming... all at the same time!

Our "peaceful" time in our appartment is soon to end: In the beginning of March we'll have five (!) people staying here with us, namely Anna, Vanessa, Cornelia, Catherine and Jeff. It's all happening at once, but that's life. We'll all go on a river cruise on the Jangtze River, to see the Three Gorges while we still can. As some of you might know, they are building the biggest dam the world has ever seen there, and then there won't be any more river cruises. So we carpe diem it ("carpe diem" is actually used as a verb in NZ for "let's do it now before it's too late").

Before that, we have Ivano here to spend the Chinese New Year together and then travel on to Macau and Hong Kong. Lee's Mum sent us a travel set of "Scrabble", so there will be lots to do :). Will be a blast, eh, Ivano?

In May, and luckily not in March, Giz and Jan have promised to come and visit us here. They are on a one year trip and it will be great to both catch up and hear about their adventures.

We are back… for good!

If the Backstreet Boys can do it, so can we! Although our “comeback” to China wasn’t easy after our grand time in NZ, we have adjusted now and present you with our photos on flickr. This time we have put some effort into descriptions of the photos, so if you are interested just click each photo individually to read them. In fact, we have filtered out a lot of photos, so you only get to see the best. Since we drowned our little digital camera while sitting on a lovely beach one evening, we haven’t taken any photos of the Fox Glacier, which was spectacular. We were promised by a friendly French girl that she’d email us some, and we’ll put them up then.

Mishaps first (ironically they always make the best stories)

1. Like we said, we mourned the loss of a camera after what would have been a perfect day of hiking, body boarding and sunshine (on the West Coast!) until that big wave caught us by surprise. Lee managed to save his big Canon camera, but the little digital one died immediately (must have been of a salt and water attack). We both felt responsible and a bit blue, since it was such a handy little thing to take everywhere, whereas the big one is more of a dinosaur: brilliant and beautiful, but heavy.
2. The summer there was the worst in 10 years, so we had to handle a lot of rain and cold. With a 25 Euro tent (Made in China), that wasn’t always fun. That also stopped us from doing some walks like the Tongario Crossing. Oh well, we still made the best of it by sometimes renting a caravan or a cabin for the night, which was a nice, unexpected luxury.
3. The Trampoline in Christchurch: After Lee had outdone ALL the kids on an air pillow earlier (you should have seen him fly!), we waited for the trampoline to get empty so we could have a go. All went according to plan until the very last 10 second, when Lee insisted on a roll backwards… and hurt his neck badly. He could hardly move or stand up. The next morning, when Lee was still shaking with pain, we went to a 24-hour-surgery, terrified that it might have damaged his spine. Luckily, it was only tense muscles and after an x-ray we could rest assured that his spine was just fine. So instead of going for a long overnight walk on the Banks Peninsula, we rented a cabin and read a lot, while Johanna was doing the cooking (for a change) and tried to pamper Lee. Luckily, he got better within a couple of days and has hopefully learned from it (that’s what the doctor said – a very attractive young woman of Indian descent…)

Now to the Highlights

1. EATING (a lot of) Western food again. Lee discovered his passion for cakes in general and Bellini cake in particular, whereas Johanna always had had a sweet tooth. Especially our meals in an Indian restaurant in Napier and an Italian restaurant in Christchurch are edged into our memories and hips…
2. The Pacific Ocean and body-boarding: Surprisingly warm ocean with beautiful big waves made Lee turn into the Beach hero, who was being asked by some kid to be his surf buddy and to teach him his “tricks”…
3. The beautifully designed, vast net of walking tracks made us spend many half days walking about in beautiful jungles, by rivers and through amazing landscapes.
4. Punakaiki, a little place on the West Coast (South Island), which has much more to offer than only the Pancake rocks. Go for a walk there, and you’ll know what we mean. We will in fact dedicate a whole set of photos to it, which will be coming soon.
5. Rare species of animals and birds made us feel like pioneers.
6. Watching the penguins coming back to the shore after sunset on Otago Peninsula. Spectacular! It was a long wait, but definitely worth it, especially when three of them walked at hands’ distance by us on their way home.
7. Thinking about it, the whole trip was in fact a highlight, so we better stop here.