Hainan China

Girlwing, her parents and I went for a eight days vacation to Sanya on the island Hainan, which is a tropical island south of China. Hainan is famous for its beautiful beaches, fancy hotels, pretty seashells, tasty seafood, giant Guan Yin (观音) and sweet coconut candies.

To the left you can see the first hotel we stayed at. GuestHouse International Hotel in Sanya is quite fancy with a great view from the top of the mountain and not too far from the beach. We payed around 400 yuan per night for a room.

The Guesthouse by night.

This little friend was waiting outside our hotel room one morning.

One day we went to NanTian Hot Springs outdoor spa. There they have fish that feed on visitors. They like exotic Swedish flesh.

Another day we went to see the giant GuanYin. On the way there we stumbled over some ancient grafitti. This one say longevity (长寿).

Here you can read "Live long and prosper" (寿无量).

These are common in temples and used for praying.

The entrance to the temple. Over the entrance you can see "二不" which should be read from right to left and literally means "not two". I leave it as your homework to figure out the deeper meaning of that.

The goal to our journey. A view of the giant Guan Yin.

Guan Yin again.

Next day we spent some time in the town and I found several interesting things to take pictures on. This is some strange tea.

When it is hot and the sun stands high, you should protect your skin from the strong sun.

Selling narcotics.

Need a copy of a key?

Or maybe buy some second handed shoes?

Here we are selling meatballs, fish balls and other kind of balls cooked in oil on a stick. To the right they sell lemonade.

In Hainan you can buy all kinds of fruit for really great prices.

Fruits are sold everywhere.

Lottery is the weeks highlight.

Selling more drugs.

A dried fish store.

An ice cold soup made of fruits like watermelon, sweet potatoes, cocnut, beans and some more stuff mixed with coconut milk and ice.

A lotus flower in a pond in the hotel area of the second hotel we stayed at.

Our bedroom in the more fancy Crowne Plaza in Sanya.

The hotel beach.

The hotel beach.

They serve drinks as well. Nice :)

This is the hotel area where we borrowed a tandem bike.

The Crowne Plaza is a really big hotel. This is just the hotel lobby. Second floor is housing a café. I like the ancient style. The hotel were the location for the miss world the same year we where there, but earlier.

Cheap Shanghai hotel

As a contrast to the nice hotel we stayed at for a couple of nights, I want to show you this cheap hotel that we stayed at before we went home to Sweden again.

This hotel is very close to Girlwings parents and is famous as a hotel for old diplomats or something similar. Once a time, long ago this was a very fancy hotel but with time it has turned old and worn down. It needs a lot of repairs and attention to become fancy again. Meanwhile it is a cheap hotel for people who don't care much how they live. We pay 132 yuan per night for two beds.

The entrance. We didn't get any key to the room, so we had to ask the girl guarding this floor every time we wanted to get in to the room and she came to open for us.

The beds are rock hard. I had to ask for an extra blanket to have under me when I sleep.

The beauty place.

The toilet and shower/bathtub. The shower is really bad because of low water pressure. I never dare to use the bathtub for a bath.

Hotel Yun's Paradise

Today we checked out from the old hotel we have lived in so far in Shanghai. It was a quite disgusting hotel but cheap. We pay 200 yaun per night including free Internet and Chinese breakfast.

But now it was time to try something more fancy during a two day vacation. Yun's Paradise! This hotel cost 1500 yuan per night but we are lucky that they are doing major constructions in the area around the hotel so the price is set to half and we pay only 750 yuan per night. The constructions in the area are that they are building fancy malls and high houses all around so when that is done the hotel room prices will probably double to 3000 per night.

The good thing about the hotel is that it is located just besides the old town and within a walking distance to the famous shopping street Nanjing road.

I have only good things to say about this hotel even if I can believe that you can live more fancy in China. This is anyway the most fancy I have lived anywhere so far. Some pictures...

The corridor leading to our room

The room entrance seen from inside.

The bed! The best bed in China ever! I miss that bed... To the right of the bed we have a couch, a small table and a sofa.

Working desk by the window, a small dining table to the left and closest we have another sofa for watching TV. The TV is a huge flat wide-screen HDTV that is turnable. At the moment it is turned to the bed.

The bathroom

The bathtub

The beauty place

Shower and toilet

Dragon Gate

Last weekend Girlwing and I went to Gävle to visit my parents. After a late breakfast on saturday we went to Älvkarleby and Dragon Gate.

We pay 150 kr per person for the entrance and included in that is a guided tour in either Swedish, English or Chinese. We took the English tour. While we waited for the tour to start we waited in the shop and were offered some green jasmine tea in nice looking china cups. I guess they wanted us to get tempted to buy some souvenirs.

The tour started and we see that they have made some really amazing stuff at the place. The guide was a young Chinese boy who is studying at the university of Gävle. He had a lot to say about the different parts of the site and he did it fast.

They say that all of the material used in the construction of the site is imported from China. Oh... that is a lot of stuff! So much stone! Must cost a fortune for transportation... :P

The big temple house will be a hotel that opens later this year. The hotel will have 56 rooms. Each of every room have its unique style taken from one of the 56 minorities in China. It would be interesting to try some of the rooms. Hmm... we have to see what the price will be.

Dragon Gate opened first time this summer but they are not done building yet. I don't know about the plans but it will be interesting to see where it all ends and how popular it will be. To make it a hit I think they need some entertainment for kids or maybe have a Chinese market on the square, selling cheap and exclusive green tea.

Ok, while I was writing this I found some information in Wikipedia where you can read that there are some plans for a Shaolin temple with a kung-fu school and when Dragon Gate are done they want to build "Dragon City", a chinese town next to Dragon Gate. There they want to build the worlds biggest Buddha statue and have living panda.

To be continued... ;)

First day in Leksand

Yesterday we did the packing, but we started way to late and finally I got to bed in the middle of the night at two o'clock. Then we have to get up at seven to eat breakfast, pack lunch, move all the flowers to a shady spot (so they'll survive 2 weeks), pack the last stuff and leave for the train station to get tickets. It was quite a stressful morning but we managed to get to the train in time.

Then we had a quite nice train trip where I listened to music while Girlwing slept. :)
In the train we saw quite many weiqi players and when we arrived we saw even more. Some organizers from EGC were there at the train station to give some people a ride to the playing venue and they were so kind to take most of the bags for all the players as well.


They day was very hot and we was walking for long periods of time under the sun and carrying our heavy bags. So exhausting! The worst part was when we walked from the playing venue to our hotel Moskogen. Only 34 min walk but a lot of bags and direct sun and no wind. So when we got to our hotel I bought us an ice-cream each to cool down and we relaxed for a while in our room. That helped a bit but we were still very tired and Girlwing slept for a while again. I should have slept too, but I didn't. Instead I defrosted the fridge and cleaned some kitchen stuff.


It was getting quite late and we needed dinner, so we went in to town and found a supermarket where we got our ingredients for dinner. Girlwing made us chinese food with just a little of my help. She did it very good. She made egg noodles with garlic broccoli and fried eggs and tomatoes.

Internet fungerar... typ...

Idag fick jag igång Internet. Jag får meddelandet att jag har en uppkopling på 100 mbit. Men det är nog bara min koppling till hubben eller switchen de har här på hotellet. Upplevd hastighet är långt ifrån imponerande. Jag kan leva med en långsam uppkoppling men det riktigt jobbiga är att jag tappar uppkopplingen allt för ofta. Jag gissar på att de har fler internetanvändare än de har ip-nummer för när jag väl får tillbaka uppkopplingen så har jag en ny ip-adress.

Jag har även upplevt problem med att posta mina blog-inlägg. Jens har varit så snäll att fixa proxy genom hans server för att jag över huvud taget ska kunna posta något alls. Men efter jag har postat så får jag en redirect till min riktiga adress och då blir det en timeout mot servern. Då slutar kontakten med Jens server att fungera. Jag får då vänta ett par minuter och sedan kommer jag åt den igen och kan posta nästa inlägg. Sedan får jag vänta ett par minuter igen o.s.v. Det är lite drygt. Lite bra är i.a.f. att Jens server behåller sessionen så jag behöver inte logga in igen mot min blog.

Strömavbrott

Imorse när jag vaknade och försökte tända lampan så hände inget. Det var strömavbrott. Jag har inga fönster till rummet så det blev väldigt mörkt. Helt svart faktiskt... kunde inte se något alls. Undrar hur länge det här håller i sig. Det var bara att ligga kvar i sängen och ta det lugnt. Lite över två timmar senare så slog strömmen på igen. Bra! Nu kan man kliva upp och äta frukost (lunch egentligen). Bara att hoppas att detta inte är något vanligt förekommande. :oP

Hotellrummet

Rummet som jag nu ska bo i är ganska litet och toaletten är minimal. Man får stå tätt intill toalettstolen när man duschar. Om man vill sitta på toaletten så måste man sitta på tvären då mina långa ben inte får plats annars p.g.a. tvättstället som är i vägen. Det är inte ett dugg bekvämt. Ni kan prova hemma. ;o)

Direkt efter incheckningen så var det dags för mat. Det blev en gammal favorit. En stor talrik med små kycklingbitar, purjolök, jordnötter och chili som är blandat i lite seg och söt sås (KongPao JiDing). En talrik kokta grönsaker som jag inte kan namnet på och var sin skål med ris. Mycket gott!

Framme i Kina

Strax före 10 på morgonen kinesisk tid (03:00 svensk tid) kom jag fram säkert och fick ut mitt bagage utan problem. För andra var det lite värre då de troligen hade packat lite otaktiskt och fått sitt bagage uppbrutet vid säkerhetskontroll. För att få igen väskorna hade de tejpat med gul tejp ett antal varv och på tejpen stod det "Security check". Jag var lite skraj att min väska skulle se ut så.

I ankomsthallen så möttes jag av Weiying. Det var en härlig och lite underlig känsla att mötas igen efter så lång tid efter att bara ha setts över Internet. Vi tog en taxi och åkte direkt till hotellet för att checka in och betala i förskott. Självklart så skulle de ha betalt i kontakt så jag fick leta reda på en bankomat. Jag hittade en tvärs över gatan men man kunde bara ta ut 1500 åt gången. Så tre utag behövde jag göra då hotellet kostar ungefär 3600. Jag upptäckte ganska snart att 1500 är gränsen om man väljer valfritt belopp men om man väljer de förprogrammerade knapparna så fanns det högsta värdet 2000 som fungerade fint. Så på det sättet fick jag ut dagsgränsen på 5000 med tre uttag. :o)