Andries en Karolien in Guangzhou

To update or not to update

2006-08-31T03:30:00.000+02:00

Hi everybody,

it's been a while since we updated the blog, but it's been really busy the last weeks. It was busy at work and busy in the evenings. We sure experienced a lot of things: happy, not so happy, strange, crazy,... and we are really eager to share them with you all.
So that's why we will update the blog when we get back home, a lot of text is already written, it's just the uploading and choosing pictures that takes too much time. But don't worry, if you just have some patience you will see them all. So probably in the first week of September big updates will follow and you will find out about several things like:
- why Chinese men do not use perfume
- why the Boeddha in Hong Kong holds his hand up
- what the Noon Day Gun is and the movie we made of it
- why Hong Kong moved a whole building from Central (in the North) to Aberdeen (in the South)
- who An An and Jia Jia are
- what the highest building in Guangzhou is
- and how this picture ended up in Guangzhou City:

See you in September!

Karolien & Andries

Thursday August 17th

2006-08-24T04:33:00.000+02:00

Today we went hunting! Not for deer or bears, but for pipes, tanks, heat exchangers, cookers and more. We explored the whole factory, writing down every piping and tank we saw. It was quite fun to search for structure in this maze of pipes. Later we made some sketches of it, to compare with the blueprints. It was a very clarifying day! At noon we had some very good canteen food, with the best egg I ever ate, too bad there was no egg left for Andries and he had to stick with the spicy noodles. ;)

In the evening we wrote the blog reports for the last seven days. We really focused on our work the last days and time really flew, so there was not much time for blogging. But we’ll do our best to keep you all updated. We also did some laundry, because also this weekend we we’ll be off to Hong Kong for three days. We didn’t booked a hotel yet (we forgot with all that work) so we certainly have to do that tomorrow…

Wednesday August 16th

2006-08-24T03:57:00.000+02:00

The day at the office started with a little commotion: there was a huge cockroach on the wall underneath the window (in front of Andries’ desk). Helen and Jeanette stayed quite calm, but none of them wanted to (try to) kill the animal. And we weren’t keen on it either. Then we discovered more about the specie of cockroaches: some of them can fly! More commotion in the office and almost panic :) until Alan came by to “gently” squeeze the cockroach with his shoes. It made a nice crunchy sound…

And yes, we worked and worked. :) But after work we went together with Alan and Jan to the outlet shops nearby, where you could buy cheap and not-fake sports clothing. The shop was really big and of course, we were unable to resist the temptation and both bought some clothes. Afterwards we went to a really good restaurant, just next to the outlets. The buffet was amazing, the choices were unlimited. We all had a really good meal there, and Andries even tried the special pizza:

The also had a chocolate fountain, this must be heaven!

The buffet:

From left to right: Jan, Alan, Karolien

Tuesday August 15th

2006-08-18T07:29:00.000+02:00

Today Alan gave us the blueprints and lay-outs of the lines, so we spent the whole day studying them. I spent almost the whole afternoon together with Jenny translating the legends. As you can guess, the drawings are in Chinese…It was not easy, but we struggled and translated everything necessary. I also learned some Chinese signs: cold water, hot water, pipe, valve and tank. Yeah :)

At the end of the day we really gained some insight in the blueprints and we already compared them to reality. Again, this was a day of really intensive working, but in the evening we rewarded ourselves and we went to the Manhattan Café for dinner. We had the buffet, where we could choose from all kinds of dishes. They even had French fries and kebab :) (and also more chic food and desserts). With a more then filled stomach we returned to the apartment to watch some television.

Monday August 14th

2006-08-18T07:28:00.000+02:00

Today was not a really exciting day, we were both very tired from the weekend. At work our day was filled with downloading and reading documents about steam and learning a lot. It’s more technical then the first project and in that way maybe more interesting.

At 6 o'clock, when we wanted to take the van back to Clifford, one of the three vans had a flat tire. So not everybody could get a place on the bus and would have to wait until one of the remaining two vans returned. Not really in the mood for waiting, we decided to walk back to Clifford. It was a trip of around 20 minutes and we could enjoy the view and the sweating (it was quite hot). In the evening we were lazier then ever: not much sleep + working hard + walking to Clifford = exhausting :) We watched an episode of Lost until we couldn’t keep our eyes open.

Sunday August 13th

2006-08-18T07:27:00.000+02:00

Autch, a painful morning. We had to get up at half past 8 because we still had so many things to explore in Macau. We had breakfast in the hotel: a mix of Chinese and Western food and we liked it very much. Afterwards, we packed our luggage, said goodbye to our huge suite and checked out. At the hotel we took a taxi to the Macau Tower. We already visited the lower floor yesterday, but today we’re going to search it much higher: we’re going to do the Skywalk! The skywalk is a thrilling experience, walking around the tower at 300 meters high. You are actually walking on the outside board of the tower about 300 meters above the ground. The path is only 1 meter wide and then you have to do these silly poses for the pictures… I can assure we only smiled on the pictures, the rest of the time we were just kicking. The view was beautiful and so are the pictures:

After we recovered from the Skywalk, we did a tour on the different floors of the Tower. Here you have the glazed floor, a lot of people where really scared to walk on it :)

Another attraction on the tower, the Skyjump: it’s like benji-jumping, but then you slide down from 3 ropes:

After the Macau Tower we took the taxi to the east side of the island where Fisherman’s Warf and Sand’s casino where situated.

Fisherman’s Warf is an open amusement park, where you only have to pay for the attractions and the rest you can visit for free. It was nice walking trough, but the temperatures were rising and shadow was most welcome.

The shadow that we found in the Sands Casino. According to Andries this is a very famous casino in Las Vegas and it’s also one of the biggest. Well, it was sure big. I think the building had like 3 floors full with gambling tables and machines. Inside you had different restaurants and gambling spots. The Wynn casino:

Because we lost the bus and so the bus terminal to get back to Guangzhou, we searched also for a new way of getting back, because on that moment we really hadn’t any option. But the Sand’s casino brought us luck, because inside there was a ticketing service for busses. After some explanation we found out that there were busses to Guangzhou center. Hooray, our ride home was arranged! I mean, our ride to Guangzhou, because from Guangzhou center it is still a 40 minute ride to Clifford. And we didn’t had a clue how we would arrange that. But that were worries for later. Now we could leave our luggage safely in the luggage deposit of the bus company, and we went back into town to visit the famous Ruin’s of St Pauls Church, thé symbol of Macau and the rest of the second part of the World Heritage tour.

The Ruin’s of St Pauls:

We also visited Mount Fortress, a large fort on a hill next to the ruins:

We also did Casa Garden with the Luis de Camoês Grotto:

Then we wanted to get back to the casino for our bus, but we couldn’t get a cab so we started walking back. And on our way back we walked into this beautiful green church and cemetery.

From here we also had a good view at the Guia Fort and Lighthouse, but we didn’t had the time to visit it.

After all the cultural visits we returned to the Sands casino. We walked along the different games, trying to understand them and we did some virtual gambling with invisible money :) Because our gambling budget of 100 RMB wasn’t finished yet (we still had 50 RMB) we played on the slots machines. Well, sometimes we were lucky and won, but most of the time we lost money. The result of the gambling weekend: minus 90 RMB. We kept two coupons with a value of 10 RMB as souvenirs :) At 19h45 we took the bus with direction Guangzhou. Again, we had to cross the border and this time we were more luck with finding the bus, because the bus (more specific: the bus assistants) found us. The sticker system is really efficient, because the personnel of the company recognizes you immediately and shows you the right bus. But the trip wasn’t over yet: this company didn’t had busses to Clifford, so we just took one to Guangzhou center where we arrived at 23h45. We weren’t sure if there were still busses to Clifford, we just waited… But we were lucky, at 12 o’clock we catched the last bus with direction Clifford. So finally, after 5 hours of traveling we arrived at Clifford and our apartment…

Saturday August 12th

2006-08-18T07:08:00.000+02:00

Well, this trip to Macau didn’t start very well. We got up too late, had to pack too much… And so we had to run to get our bus at 8h55. Andries took a head start (yes, he is faster than me) to stop the bus, I tried to catch up with him but tripped over a curb. Autch. But the bus waited and 5 minutes later we were heading to Macau. Because the trip was longer then to Hong Kong, the bus stopped at a wayside restaurant. I wanted to go the toilet, but I postponed it until Macau when I saw the toilets. Maybe the people who went to China before can remember the wayside restaurant toilets… it’s really disgusting… Most of them are not flushed, the smell is incredible, and there is dirty paper everywhere. Back on the road we stood in a traffic-jam for a while due to an accident with a small truck. Apparently he had a blowout by which he lost his load. If you zoom in on the picture, you can see a Puratos box (with Bread Improver S500, we are already geeks on that field).

We crossed the boarder in Zhuhai, a nice city along the coast, with a coast line very similar to Spain or the South of France.

At Zhuhai, the bus left us in an underground parking, and we tried to follow our fellow passengers, but we lost them quickly. The control posts at the border were no problem, we were already experienced :) An important advice: never forget to bring your own ball point, otherwise you can start asking around (like us) and that’s not easy with only Chinese speaking people around you. Luckily we were in the “Foreigners Lane” and the chance of catching English speaking people there is much higher. And yes, we got again new stamps on our passports! The one in Macau are blue and not red (as the Chinese and Hong Kong’s). We already collected more then 10 stamps. But the happiness about our new blue stamps quickly turned into worries, when we couldn’t find our bus behind the border. We searched the whole border area: the bus stations under the ground, the own on the left, the one on the right… We went to the Information Desk, but they couldn’t help us out. Then we considered taking a taxi, but the row of waiting people was already 100 meters long. Not an option. So we went back to one of the bus stations, we showed them our tickets and they pointed out a new (smaller) bus for us. Okay… With no clue where we were going, we just stepped on the bus.

At the Macau border:

On the bus I was sitting next to a student (who could speak English) and I asked her if she knew where the bus stopped. Well, it was certainly going in the right direction: the town center. She declared me crazy, not knowing where this bus was going :) At different stops, everybody was getting of the bus, until only a Chinese man and we were left. He was very friendly and asked were we wanted to get off. We just wanted to go to the Senado Square, the center of the old city and he assisted us from the bus stop to there. Really, Chinese people are so friendly, every time we are stunned by them being so helpful.

On the Senado Square, we went to the tourist office to gather some information. Afterwards we had lunch and decided to do the first part of a tour along all the World Heritage of Macau. It was a really beautiful walk along the very European style churches and buildings. You know, Macau has more churches per square kilometer than the Vatican!

Here are some sights of Macau:

Cathedral and the square around it:

St. Dominic’s Church:

Senado Square:

Leal Senado Building:

Holy House of Mercy:

St. Augustine’s Church and Square:

Sir Robert Ho Tung Library:

St. Lawrence church:

Moorish Barracks:

A-Ma temple:

And along the Gate of Understanding and a beautiful view over the surrounding islands, this tour led us to the Macau Tower, one of the highest in the world.

Gate of Understanding on the right, brigde to Taipa on the left:

We didn’t actually visited the tower (because we wanted to do something special there tomorrow), we only visited the exhibition center next to the tower. Inside we had a drink in the Café on 4 where they had a special special:

From there we took a taxi to the hotel, which was actually situated on Taipa island, the island next to Macau. We had to get in line to wait for a taxi, but the view when we were driving over one of the bridges in between Macau and Taipa was priceless. In the hotel, a pleasant surprise awaited us. We booked a standard room (the cheapest, we are only students) but because they were all full, we got: a suite! Andries didn’t believed it at first, but we had a suite. You know, a huge room with three parts: the living room with leather seats a minibar and TV and then the sleeping room with beds and a second TV and another seat and then the bath room with bath and shower. It was almost as big as our apartment! Hallelujah, this was nice! After overcoming the excitement about the room, excuse me, suite, we decided to take a dive in the swimming pool. Apparently nobody shared our idea, so we had a private swimming pool for us. The rich life…

Then we went for food: Pizzahut. The Pizzahut’s in Hong Kong are very different from those in China and Europe, because in Hong Kong they are really luxurious. The food is not more expensive then in China but you just have more choices. After a good meal, we went gambling! A suite, a private swimming pool and good food: like real rich people we entered the casino area! Maybe this could be our lucky day! We started with Hotel Lisboa, the most famous one in Macau. While we were just wondering around in the casino we met two Mexicans: Roberto and Diana. We hanged out with them for the rest of the evening, chatting about China and Europe and Mexico… It was really nice. We also gambled, we had a gambling budget for the weekend of 100 RMB (= 10 euros). Today we already spent half of it on the slots machines (the rest of the games were to difficult to understand in such a short period of time) :) Although we’ve won sometimes, in the end all our money was gone. The highest sum we won was around 30 RMB. But we had a fun night, wandering around bars and casinos. It was late when we arrived back at our suite and we had no trouble with falling asleep.

Friday August 11th

2006-08-15T11:44:00.000+02:00

Today we had some discussions about the new project. It was not enough to just follow the progress of the new line, we really had to do something. So we spent almost the whole day searching for good subjects. Jan and Alan helped us. At noon, we went again to the Japanese restaurant together with Jan and Alan and had a very good meal there. (Better than the food in canteen ;) ) In the afternoon, the new subject for the thesis was set down. Because of the installation of the new wet line, maybe the steam generator would not provide enough steam, so we will investigate if so and find solutions. We already started with some research and it is really amazing what you all can do with steam :) An interesting project! We spent the rest of the day on research. At the apartment we started packing and planning for Macau. Also, Aric (from sales) gave us the first Lost season on DVD, so we started with the first episodes. We calculated that we just have enough evenings to watch the whole season here in China. Alright! ;)

Thursday August 10th

2006-08-11T04:22:00.001+02:00

Today we had a new Belgian visitor, Jan, who will work on the wet line project (our new project). He will stay here until August 18^th, so we will be working together for some time. In the morning we started with following a meeting about the new line, we studied some drawings and so on. It looks like this project is going to be a lot more technical then the first one, but we can only welcome that. After the meeting we went to a Japanese restaurant at Clifford. Present where: Jan, Alan, Jenny (the business translator who just graduated), Gary (one of the subcontractors for this project, his company will install the new line, he’s Jenny’s boss), and then a mechanical engineer who’s name I forgot and also the PLC programmer who’s name I also forgot. So we had a good meal, Andries made a mess of his shirt (and we just did the laundry…) and we returned happy and satisfied to the office. In the afternoon I spend some time finishing the capacity project, while Andries followed a new meeting. In the late afternoon we went down to production, where some major problems with the installation of the line have to be solved. We’ll see how that works out tomorrow… We also went on the roof of the building, to see the cooling towers and from that roof we had also a great view over the surrounding. We could see Clifford from up there :)

So we had a really busy day actually and it wasn’t over yet. In the evening we invited Rocky and his girlfriend and her sister over to watch the Alzheimer Case DVD we bought. Because we didn’t have any beer in the apartment, Andries rushed back to the supermarket to get some TsingTao bottles. And we already had tea and hot water, so no mistakes this time. We watched the movie with Chinese speaking and French subtitles, so that both nationalities could follow. The evening was nice, the movie was very good and the beer bottles were finished, so it was time to close our eyes…

Wednesday August 9th

2006-08-11T04:22:00.000+02:00

Today we spent the whole day –again- finishing the project. We ran trough all the data we collected, as well on paper as digital. We listed up the things we have to do here and which things we can do at home. We still have a lot of work for this project, but to have some change, we really want to do this new wet line project.

The rest of the day was quite normal, maybe then for the chat with Mieke, who was in Singapore and actually in the same time zone as I was ànd (if you look at a world map) I was on the tropic of Cancer while she was right ‘under’ me on the equator. Really crazy :) Hope you have as much luck on your flight to Adelaide as the one to Singapore! Have fun in Australia!

In the evening we did the rest of the laundry, and I must say it is a really satisfying feeling to see all the clean clothing in the wardrobe and not just a pile of dirty clothes. To reward our efforts, we spend the rest of the evening watching “Flightplan”, a really good and thrilling movie. DVD of the month :)

About another DVD then, the Chinese Belgian DVD, this is going to be a brother of and sister of clash :) Because you both answered quickly and correct, we decided to have a sifting question; the one who is closest to the exact price of the DVD gets it :) Of course we want the price in RMB (remember, 1 euro is 10 RMB). The winner will be announced after the weekend. Btw, in Chinese the title means as much as: Bad face, good heart. Strange.

More about the weekend: we’ll spend two days in Macau. This piece of China has the same statutes as Hong Kong, so we’ll have to pass again a border and will get more stamps on our passports. Cool :)

Tuesday August 8th

2006-08-10T09:33:00.000+02:00

Our day started with a meeting with Alan and Linda (production planning). The important lines for the increasing capacity project are finished and we only need 1 or 2 days work here, so that we can do the rest at home in Belgium. Alan was satisfied with our work and he said that we could also participate in the new wet line project for the rest of our time here. With Linda is the communication is harder, because her English is not so good, so we spent some time together (after the meeting) to explain some of the parts better. I think it’s a real challenge for us. As an engineer, you normally find the trouble with explaining the technical things to non-technical people, but here we also get the problem of explaining it in another language ànd explaining it to people that don’t know the language that well. But we learned a lot, and so we adapted the rest of our work to more visual parts and more clear explanations. Hooray for our communication classes! ;)

So the rest of the day we spent finishing our work. We also have two other meetings planned this week: one final meeting with Alan and Linda to round off the first project and the second one on Thursday with a lot of other people to start the new wet line project.

After work we went to the DVD shop and you could never guess which movie we found there… It has some famous Belgian actors in it… Like Sinterklaas and family of Bob de Builder and Nick de Flik ;) Well, let’s make a small game of it. The first one who gives us the name of the DVD (in a comment, a mail doesn’t count, because of the timing) gets it when we get home. :)

Arrived at the apartment, the gas cylinder was changed so we had hot water to do the laundry! Hooray! We only did half of the laundry, because we were so sick of it ;) The rest is for tomorrow…

Monday August 7th

2006-08-08T08:41:00.000+02:00

Today we are exactly 1 month here, in Guangzhou in South-China. It has been a wonderful time already and we have more big things to come. Next weekends will be filled with Macao, Hong Kong and the last one Guangzhou. Time has passed so quickly, we didn’t realize it that we are already here for so long. But we don’t have much time to stand still by this fact, because Monday means working day! We finished some more work on the capacity project and although it is not finished, we really want to get involved in the project around the new wet line, we’ll see how that works out in the coming days.

Alan, the operations manager, returned from his holiday today, he went to the whole north west of China, close to the Russian border. It’s an area with a lot of small deserts and mountains. According to our books, this area is called Xinjiang, one of the farthest corners of the country.

You are waiting for a typhoon update? Well, on the news Bopho appeared. Bopho is a tropical storm (not yet a typhoon) that is again heading for the South-Chinese coast. Probably he will deliver us some bad weather at the end of the week.

Btw, I told you that last week electricity was down, well this time our gas cylinder was empty (the gas isn’t delivered trough pipes). So we couldn’t cook or shower or do the dishes. But tomorrow we’ll call Cathy and hopefully we it will be fixed when we come back tomorrow so that we can finally do our laundry! (We’ve been postponing it for like 5 days and now I actually ran out of clean clothing…Iew)

Sunday August 6th

2006-08-08T08:30:00.000+02:00

The weather was getting back at his normal rate, hot and humid, so today was an excellent day to visit the Safari Park nearby. Because there are no Clifford busses towards it, we had to take a taxi. When we approached the taxi stand, a handful of drivers came to us, but as experienced customers, we stayed calm and took just the one with the best price. It was 40 RMB one trip (8 km) and if you compare it to the bus to Guangzhou (more than 8 km, 14 RMB one trip), it’s expensive to take a taxi here. In Guangzhou center they are much cheaper. But for those 40 RMB we got good service and where dropped just in front of the entrance.

The Safari Park consisted of two areas: Safari on Wheels and Safari on Foot. We started with the Safari on Wheels, where a Tourist Train takes you trough the whole area. You can also do this trip with your own car for only 6 euro. But then it’s more like standing in a traffic-jam with on both sides wild animals. And hysterical kids in the back seat. So we saw all kinds of animals in their “natural” environment.

<>
Afterwards, we did the Safari on foot, which was actually like walking trough a zoo. A Chinese zoo, not to be mistaking. A lot of people will know that my weak spot are animals, and so it was kind of hard sometimes to see them in certain conditions. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of animals where having a good time here, but some things where just way over the top. And that with endangered species… I’m not going to tell everything that disturbed me, but I’ll just show the pictures. Have in mind that the tiger, the (white) Siberian tiger, the Giant Panda and the Oerang Oetan are highly endangered species and that many things you can see on these pictures are forbidden in Europe. But not in

China

White Siberian Tiger, on a leash for pictures with tourists.
Flamingo’s

Ara's

Ibis birds

Koala’s

Asian Elephants

Baby Siberian and Bengal Tigers in the nursery home.

This pictures cost 20 RMB.

Also in the nursery home, baby Black bears.

White Tiger show.

Dressed monkey show.

Oerang Oetan.

So in the park we saw a lot of animals, very special animals, and also some not so nice things. A lot of visitors were trowing food to the animals, even when it was not allowed and even cookies still in their wrapping. A lot of animals were used to stand on pictures with the (paying) visitor. Btw, the two shows that we have seen are things that are forbidden in Europe, certainly with these two endangered species. But still, in the end, we had a good visit and we saw a lot of animals that we never saw before..

In the evening we went (finally) swimming. The swimming pool in the resort center is a big outside pool, the only disadvantage was that the deepest spot was only 1,40m deep. But the water was cool and refreshing.

At home we catched Tomb Raider the Cradle of Life (movie of the month on Pearl TV, they were making publicity for this movie since we arrived here…) and we had a lot of “been there, done that” moments, because the movie was mostly situated in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Saturday July 5th

2006-08-08T08:28:00.000+02:00

We thought we would be wakened by the cleaning team around 9h30, but apparently they changed their planning and only came around 13h, so with no concrete plans for the weekend, we slept until 10h30 or so. We had a lazy morning, just playing computer games or reading or just doing nothing. But when the cleaning team arrived we had to get out of the house. We ‘planned’ on just going to the supermarket, but in the end we had dinner in the restaurant next to the swimming pool. The price: 114 RMB, that’s 11,40 euro, for a meal that would cost like 50 euro in Belgium. And then we even got a coupon (value 10 RMB) for a discount next time. Afterwards, again no supermarket, but we took the bus to Guangzhou to visit the Pagoda. So a lot of decisions without planning are exiting, but the result was that we’ve forgotten our camera. And we had no maps or whatever to help us. It was guessing all the way.

When we arrived in the city, it was already too late to visit the Pagoda, so we decided to visit the Yue Xiu Park, one of the largest city parks in China?. We didn’t know exactly with metro stop we had to take, but as proved in the past, we are very good at guessing. (Also because the name of the park was in the name of the metro stop…).

<>Before we entered the park we bumped into a Tourist Info (this was our lucky day), where we had several nice experiences. Rule number one, never step into a Tourist Info (as a white person) without knowing what you really want. Because you will be attacked by 2 Chinese people who want to know what you want to know and “we are just looking” doesn’t count. Rule number two: if you have to make up something, avoid something with a too recognizable name. We said we wanted to know something about Ocean’s Park (it’s an amusement park in Hong Kong) and before we realized it, the whole building knew that we wanted to go to Ocean’s Park. So in the end, the Tourist Info wasn’t such a help. So we bought our big city map (it’s huge!) in the 7-Eleven across the street. Finally outside the Tourist Info, we discovered a Lamborghini and a Rolls Royce garage, resp. with one and no car in it. Strange. But the yellow Gallardo looked very nice :) A pity that we forgot our camera…

In the Yue Xiu Park we bought a small camera. Not a digital or a disposable one, just a simple camera with a film and batteries included. For 128 RMB. Nice. So I think we took very nice pictures, but we can only tell after a while. It was quite silly to walk around with this non-digital model where zooming happens by walking closer or further away… Thank god for technology. In the park we saw the statue of the 5 goats, where the city is famous for. I don’t know the exact story behind it, but it something with 5 goats in the major parts :) So around 9h we took the bus back home and finally went to the supermarket.

Friday August 4th

2006-08-08T08:21:00.000+02:00

Today we spent almost the whole day at production. They were producing different batches that were very alike to the donut products we study, so it was interesting to follow. And for the rest, it was not such a special day :) After work we went home, we cleared up the apartment (because they will be cleaning in the weekend), watch some TV and went to bed. Gee, we can be so boring sometimes. But the weekend will be more exciting…

Thursday August 3rd

2006-08-07T08:42:00.000+02:00

So in the morning we went –together with Rocky- to get our lost bag. I was hopeful that he would be returned, but that feeling diminished fast. We had to ask at the ticket offices, but nobody knew something about a lost bag. We explained the situation again (the bus switch and so on) but they just didn’t know. Rocky got the phone number of the ticket office and they would call him if there’s any news. My faith in the returning of the bag was already down to zero; certainly because Helen said the day before that we would be very lucky if it was found. I was thinking about my new skirt and all the presents… But as Andries said, look at the positive side of it: we only lost material things, it would be worse if you would forget me on the bus or visa versa. And we still have both our legs. Andries has a special way of cheering people up :) So our working day started a bit sad. But when we where just half an hour behind our desks, Rocky came with the happy news that the bag was found and that we could pick it up later. With renewed energy we started working like never before ;)

The rest of the day was quite normal, only for the weather then. Today was the worst day since we’ve been here: it was raining almost horizontally and the wind was blowing our umbrella’s away. Trees were moving and branches flew off. But still, this was no typhoon. When Prapiroon made land yesterday, it was already reduced to ‘just’ a tropical storm. And it didn’t pass Guangzhou, which lies in the center of the Guangdong province, but only the west of Guangdong. The reason why we feel it so much harder then Billis or Kayme is that Prapiroon passed trough the west, while the other two passed us on the east side. You can find all this information on the site in yesterday’s story. Off course, for us this is more exciting then for you all, because we are just in the middle of it. The weather forecast for the weekend is better, less rain, more sun. Hooray!

Wednesday August 2nd

2006-08-03T07:38:00.000+02:00

Aaaah, back to work! The day was long, and we worked very hard, although we were both tired. The food in the canteen was very good today, we had a good meal. Actually, we only eat Chinese food in the canteen or when we go out eating with our boss. In the weekends and in the evening we prefer western food like pasta or bread with choco or pizza.

So after a hard day of working we got back to the apartment, after our daily visit to the supermarket. But when we arrived, there was no electricity. Mmmm, not so good. No electricity means no hot water, no fridge, no freezer, no TV or DVD, no microwave and worse: no lights. Like I told you before, it gets dark here around half past 7, so we only had half an hour light left and it was already diminishing. So we cooked quickly some food (hooray for gas cooking) and ate it when the sun was setting. The flashlight I brought from Belgium broke down in the first week, so the only light we had was that of our mobiles. We called Rocky, who also lives in Clifford but in the C area (we live in the A area), and he also had no electricity. So we decided to go to the supermarket to buy some candles and a flash light. After running around in the supermarket, we finally found a led light that could go as flash light. And of course, back at the apartment, our led light was 10 minutes on and the electricity was back. It had been down for 2 hours. We watched some TV and on the news they gave typhoon news: Prapiroon (original name huh) was heading for the South of China. This is the third tropical storm since we arrived here and I think the closest until now. In Hong Kong on Tuesday we saw typhoon alarm T1, today on TV it was already T3. That could explain of course the bad weather.

http://www.hko.gov.hk/informtc/tcsignal.htm

But still, no worries, we always watch Pearl TV, that broadcast from Hong Kong, so the signal is not really right for Guangzhou. And also, Hong Kong lies by the coast while Guangzhoulies deeper into the river delta. So we don’t worry and just watch the spectacular images on TV :) The bad weather kept going on for the whole night, it was raining hard and the wind was blowing like in a storm.

Tuesday August 1

2006-08-03T05:03:00.000+02:00

So today was already our last day in Hong Kong. In the morning we packed our bags and left them in the hotel lobby, so we didn’t have to drag them around. We started the day with some morning exercises, the Escalator. This time we did the whole circuit, that took a loooong time and we got higher and higher. I don’t know the exact length of the Escalator, but if you see it on the map is quite a distance. To avoid misunderstanding: the Escalator is not one long escalator but divided in several shorter parts. But in total it is the longest covered escalator in the world. And we "climbed" it! At the end of the Escalator we walked back down in the direction of the town center. We visited the Zoological and Botanical Gardens, where we saw different kinds of apes like the Oerang-oetan and the Saki and much more. There was also a leopard, many cages with all kinds of birds, two Chinese alligators and a python. It was really hot, so the shadow of the trees did well.

Pictures: 1) on our way to the park we saw this orange Lamborghini passing by. In Hong Kong we also saw a Ferrari and a Rolls Royce :)
2) The park
3) A sleeping leopard
4) Ringstaartmaki (I don't know the English name)

Then we visited the Hong Kong Park, that had a huge aviary (= birdhouse) where you could just walk in. Really nice. And Andries became a real wild bird photographer :)

Afterwards it was already time to be heading back to the hotel to pick up our luggage. Before we took the bus, we visited the Tin Sau Tin Temple (or something like that). It is the largest temple in Hong Kong and it is situated in the north of Kowloon. A lot of people where praying and offering food (like oranges) and incense to Buddha.

In the different MTR stations and shopping malls, we noticed a sign with T1 typhoon alarm on it. We didn’t knew exactly what it means, so I searched for it on the internet:

http://www.hko.gov.hk/informtc/tcsignal.htm No worries :)

We had a milkshake and a McFlurry in the McDonalds nearby and then it was time to be heading to the bus station. We took the bus at 18h40, but we only departed at 19h or so.

Same old story at the border. The first stop was no problem. We didn’t even have to take our luggage off the bus. But the second time, we had. And yes, we had a perfect weekend, nothing went wrong, until then. Unaware that we left a bag on the first bus, we had to change bus on the other side of the border. We only realized that we were missing a bag until we were already in Panyu (the district where we live in Guangzhou). Autch. So Andries went to the driver when we were stopping to refuel. But the driver didn’t know a word English so another guy came as a translator. Many phone calls later, our bag was found and will be brought back to Clifford on Thursday. We’ll see then. What was in the bag? Some of the gifts we bought in Disneyland, our postcards from Hong Kong, my white skirt and some papers about Hong Kong. The total value: around 1000 RMB. Hope we’ll get it back on Thursday. And so we met Leo and his girlfriend who helped us translating. He lives in Guangzhou and studies in Canada. During the year he stays in Canada but during the holidays he comes back home. And yes, he also went to Disneyland :)

(Update: we've got the bag back. Hooraay!)

Monday July 31th

2006-08-03T04:55:00.000+02:00

Today: Hong Kong Disneyland! We took the metro, together with hundreds of parents with their kids, direction: Lantau Island, where we would take the special metro line: the Disneyland line! And yes, that line was special. Here is a picture of the metro:

Disneyland was amazing. It is not that big as Paris, but still amazing. Everybody of the staff is smiling and waving at you, wishing you a magical day. Everybody speaks perfect English and is very helpful. And most important of all, you can’t compare Disneyland with Six Flags or whatever, because here everything is perfect. The shows, the attractions, the whole surrounding,… We really had a good day and had a lot of fun. As the pictures will tell:

The entrance and main street:

Adventure Land:

Fantasy Land:

Tomorrow Land:

The shows:

By night:
Bye bye:

Sunday July 30th

2006-08-03T04:49:00.001+02:00

So today we visited the Big Buddha. You know, the one Andries is always talking about. The Buddha is situated on Lantau Island, one of the islands of Hong Kong. Lantau is one of the biggest islands and has two country parks. So this is a really “green” island. Besides the Big Buddha, also Disneyland and the new Hong Kong airport are situated on Lantau. Wow, Disneyland ànd the Big Buddha, I wonder why they didn’t name this island Andries Favorite Island Ever. :)

On the island there’s another ‘cool’ thing: the largest cable lift in the world. But it’s not working yet. It should have been finished in Spring 2006, but that’s postponed due to some technical problems. What a pity… But at least we saw the largest cable lift in the world. As proven on these pictures.

With the cable lift not working, we are bound to take the bus. The trip was long and bumpy, but load was Andries’ shout of joy when we saw this: (the little thing on the mountain is a 26m high Buddha)

More pictures of the Buddha and the temple complex:

In the entrance fee was a meal included, so after some running up and down the stairs we could enjoy a nice vegetarian meal. Yes, indeed, Buddhists are strict vegetarians. I think this was the easiest meal (for me) ever, just knowing that I didn’t had to worry about ‘would this be meat or not?’.

After the temple visit, we took another bus to… the beach! Luckily the weather was better then yesterday so we could enjoy a ray of sunshine. Andries spend the whole time swimming in the sea, while I enjoyed some sun bathing. Wonderful.

Andries showing off at the beach…

Afterwards we had a cool drink on a terrace…

And so we took the ferry back to Hong Kong Island. All these pictures are made by Andries, he’s got a hidden talent :)

At Hong Kong Island we went to visit Victoria Peak (and we weren’t the only ones). The Peak Tram takes you up the hill, where you have a beautiful view over the city…

<>
After taking a lot of pictures, we took the Peak Tram down (and again, we weren’t the only ones) and went back to the hotel. That took more then 45 minutes (with walking and ferry included) so next time we’ll take a hotel on Hong Kong Island. Really really really tired we went straight to bed.<>

Saturday July 29th

2006-08-03T04:33:00.000+02:00

Both with little eyes, we dragged ourselves and the luggage to the bus station. The trip to Hong Kong would take about 2,5 hours. This time we didn’t forget our passports. :) Because Hong Kong is not China, we had to cross the border and go trough the whole controlling procedure again. So it was up to Shenzhen, where we would cross the border. This time we weren’t filmed before the bus departed. As we arrived at the border, we had to get off the bus for the first control point. We had to take our entire luggage with us, to put it back on the bus on the other side of the border. A bit stupid… By the way, according to Andries, the border looked like Jurassic Park :) Why? Because for Shenzhen the high buildings really stand close to the border (= the river) and behind it you’ve got the green mountains of the New Territories, the area between China and Hong Kong. Along the riverside there were huge fences with barbed wire and gates, all secured by camera’s. But no T-rex… So we did some bus hopping for the first time, well, 10 minutes later the same story: the entire luggage of the bus, through the custom control point and back on the bus. I told you before about the papers we had to fill in on the plane, well, we had to fill in the same ones here. About health and your destination and so on. By the way, there are like 20 busses standing on that border, so you really have to remember which one is yours. And the busses aren’t that different. We bought our tickets by a large company so there were like 5 green busses waiting. Luckily we had these stickers that we had to put on a visible place on our clothing, so we were recognized by the staff who directed us to the right bus.

We now had 4 new stamps on our passports and were ready to conquer Hong Kong. First we drove trough the New Territories. A lot of hills and green, only disturbed by car dumps. Then the buildings were rising and we knew we finally arrived in Hong Kong city. First impression: wet. It was raining all day and it didn’t look like it was going to stop. We got off at Prince Edward station. It was already 12h. Before we could take the metro, we had to redraw some money. Again, Hong Kong is not China, so they don’t have RMB here, but Hong Kong dollars. The rate is about the same: 1 RMB is 1,05 HK dollar. When we took the metro we immediately realized that life here was more expensive then in China. The price for a MTR ticket was almost double if you compare it to Shenzhen or Guangzhou. The destination was Tsim Sha Tui Waterfront on Kowloon where we had a beautiful view on the skyline on Hong Kong Island

Hong Kong Skyline with on the right the 3th tallest building in the world:

Hong Kong skyline with on the left the Exhibition Center:

Because we could only check in at the hotel at 14h, we walk along the coast line, taking a lot of pictures. We decided to walk to the hotel because it wasn’t that far away. We walked trough Nathan Road (aka The Golden Mile) with a lot off small shops all selling electronics like camera’s and mobile phones. I don’t now if they were real our fake. Again, Hong Kong is not China, I think we saw more other nationalities then Chinese. A lot of Indies and of course don’t forget the American tourist, easily recognized by his attitude. I can assure you, after 4 days I really had enough of them. Brrr.

<>Nathan Road:
So at 14h we checked in at the hotel, it was okay, but the rooms where rather small and the ceiling was a bit low. But everything was clean and working. Because of the bad weather (it was raining like hell) we stayed inside longer then planned. But after a while we got out, raining or not. We took the ferry to Hong Kong Island. It is actually cheaper than the metro (less then 5 HK dollar for the both of us) and it brought is just across the river.

Skyline and ferry inbetween Kowloon and Hong Kong Island:

We started our walk on Hong Kong Island with a visit to the Exhibition Center. A very modern and big building, like you can see on the pictures. Inside there was a Game Fair, so a lot of strangely dressed people where walking around. And a lot of people where taking pictures of them :)

When we wanted to get out of the Center, it was raining again and very windy and we were even send back in by the security. The bad weather was part of some leftovers from the tropical storm last week I guess. Because we had nothing else to do, we decided to go and see the Game Fair. Tickets where cheap and tourist even had a separated entrance so we don’t had to queue for 2 hours like the rest. The Game Fair was a bit strange, because we expected a lot of parents with children, but instead we saw a lot a teenagers (and older!) buying toys and computer games. But we had fun wandering around there, as you can see on the pictures.

When the raining stopped, it was already getting dark and we decided to finish our walk. The pictures speak for themselves. We also took the Escalator, the largest covered escalator in the world. And we did only the beginning, because there was only one way (up) and we were to tired to walk to whole way down.

Tsim Sha Tui Waterfront, as seen from Hong Kong Island:

The Chinese Bank Tower, Andries favorite tower in Hong Kong, we got like 50 pictures of it and this is one of them:

Hong Kong Skyline by night:

The Escalator:

Some other short facts about Hong Kong:

They have also double deck busses as in London. Except they are not red, but green or gold.
They even have double deck trams.
All high buildings are connected with each other trough tunnels above the ground, so actually, you never have to walk on the street.

The double deck tram (with on the background a double deck bus):

Friday July 28th

2006-08-03T03:40:00.000+02:00

Last day of working before our 4-day-trip, so we did our best. We are really making progress. After work Rocky delivered us –again- some delicious chocolate muffins. He said we should keep them for breakfast, but they were already finished before we even arrived at the apartment. Mmmm :) Rocky helped us with searching the right bus for tomorrow and we bought our tickets: they cost 80 RMB for one person one way. Afterwards we went to the supermarket to buy some drinks and food for the trip.

<>At home we did the last pieces of laundry (hooray, finally finished) and we watched the Interpreter and some TV. The programs are actually quite good here, so you don’t hear us complaining. After a lazy evening we still had some packing to do. Surprisingly, my part was done quite quickly, it was Andries who couldn’t decide which pants and matching T-shirt he would pack. So after some female assistance and some nagging from my side, he finally got what he wanted to pack. It was already 12 o’clock then, so we went straight to bed, because we bought tickets for the bus at 9h, so we had to rise early.

Thursday July 27th

2006-07-28T04:40:00.000+02:00

Today we spent almost the whole morning searching for a hotel in Hong Kong. Tracy made some prepositions, but we thought we could find cheaper ones on the internet. An important lesson that we’ve learned: book your hotel earlier, certainly during the summer holiday. Eventually we took the hotel Tracy recommend us, it costs 200 euro for 3 nights. Not that expensive, but we could’ve find cheaper. But the hotel is located in the heart of Kowloon, next to the subway, close to the ferry,…

After lunch we really start working hard, because the meetings yesterday gave us some new goals to work to. We have a next deadline for August 9, so I think the coming weeks will be quite busy.

Driving back to Clifford was again big fun, in one way or the other we always succeed in choosing the happy van. Andries said we should try to film it once, so could all see what it’s like. Tomorrow we’ll try some illegal camera smuggling :)

In the evening we did (finally) some washing. The whole apartment was filled with clothes hangers with T-shirts, skirts, pants, … all to dry in the airco. A quite funny sight. Normally we would hang it al outside, but because of the rain last night, we didn’t want to risk it. It’s actually been cooler the last three days, weather reports say around 26 degrees and sometimes there is a ‘fresh’ breeze. But still you can’t compare it to a Belgian cool day, because the temperature is still high. We never needed any clothing with long sleeves. :) After all the washing we did some Hong Kong planning. We are really looking forward to this 4 day trip. We won’t bring the laptops to Hong Kong although we have internet access on the room, so there will be no update until Wednesday. See you then!

Picture of Andries at work. On the left you can see our lab coats. We have to wear them everytime we go into the production unit (we are dealing with food) together with a hair cap. In certain units we also have to wear a facial mask and gloves.

Wednesday July 26th

2006-07-27T05:27:00.000+02:00

The day started with a lot of fun in the van, a lot of laughing and joking around. We didn’t understand a word of it, but with 7 happy Chinese in the van, it hardly to suppress a laugh. The rest of the day was filled with meetings: before lunch with Alan (operations manager) and Linda (planning) and after lunch with the boss. They both went very well, our work is appreciated and we have now new directions for the coming weeks. Also the boss gave us the two days off next week so that we can stay in Hong Kong for 4 days. We asked Tracy to search a hotel for us.

In the afternoon we went to R&D (Research and Development) and we discovered what advantages working for a company that produces bakery products there are: Rocky gave us muffins (still hot from the oven!) and bread for in the morning. They prepare this tasty stuff for tests on softness and so, but after the tests it’s “useless” and because they can’t eat everything the personnel can take some home. The Rocky muffins are really the best I ever ate :)

In the evening we did some planning for Hong Kong. This is the provisional planning:

<>Saturday: City Center on Hong Kong Island and Victoria Peak
Sunday: Lantau Island with the Great Buddha, Discovery Bay and the beach
Monday: Disneyland Hong Kong, the place where (Andries’) dreams come true.
Tuesday: City Center on Kowloon.

Websites for those who are interested:
Hong Kong Disneyland
Algemene info over Hong Kong

Tuesday July 25th

2006-07-27T05:26:00.000+02:00

As I told yesterday, we putted the cockroach traps around the house. The traps are small black boxes ( 4 x 4 x 1 cm) with 4 entrances (for the cockroach of course) and in the middle some cockroach food mixed with poison. When they eat it, they’ll die. So this morning we woke up with two dead cockroaches in the kitchen. So it’s now 6 – 2 for us against the cockroaches. Hooray!

For the rest actually nothing special happened today, so I’ll just give you a short news update:

* As you may have probably saw on the news the tropical storms Billis and Kayme (I’m not sure of the name) swept along the South Chinese coast this and last week. They caused great damage in our province Guangdong, but here we hardly notice anything. The weather is now since 2 days cooler (due to Kayme I guess) and it’s been raining. But no damage or strong winds or whatever.

* We made plans to go to Hong Kong this weekend and tomorrow we’ll ask the boss if we can get Monday and Tuesday off, so that we can stay there for 4 days.