Jiuzhaigou Park – The Robotic Chinese Tourist

China’s most beautiful preserved nature reserve.
There is some myth behind this park aswell which we didn’t really understand..
This nature reserve is a major tourist attraction – so big that there are hotel cities all around it just to host the many tourists who come to this park!
This park is built for the chinese tourist.. there’s a bus in the park which stops at all the main attractions – there the chinese tourists get off take some quick ridiculous photos of them selves infront of the sign explaining what’s infront of them rather than with the beautiful lake/waterfall/whatever.. and then they hurry back on the bus and move to the next “attraction”.
We tried very hard to avoid this method of exploring the park and walk around on our own and enjoy the beautiful nature..
There are no words that can describe the beautiful nature, see for yourself:
http://gallery.atpic.com/18764

Love,
NoaAyal

Chengdu – Gotta love those pandas!

As we already told you, we couldn’t move on to Sichuan province – Chengdu the way we wanted to, so we had to go back via Lijiang (and visit the mama once again!)..

From there we took a 24 hour bus ride – with pics this time! This bus ride wasn’t as bad as shorter rides we’ve had because for the first time in china our driver did not smoke and did not allow smoking on his bus!!! we loved him!! so the only thing we had to cope with was stinky chinese socks (he forced passengers to take their shoes off as well!) but thank god Noaa had a window!!

Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province and pretty much the only place you can visit in north west Sichuan (riots in tibet).
The main attraction in this city is the Panda Research and Preservation center which is home to many pandas and is the biggest breading center for pandas world wide!
Other than that there’s a HUGE BUDDHA near by which we went to see.. it’s really big! We think it’s almost 100m tall..
Another main attraction is the SUBWAY (sandwich restaurant) which Noaa spotted on a bus ride in the city.. finally a break from rice and noodles, god bless SUBWAY!

Expect some beautiful nature on our next post..

Here are Chengdu’s pics:
http://gallery.atpic.com/18763

Love,
NoaAyal

Shangri-la

Brrrrr – cold!
Shangri-la lies in a valley surrounded by snow peak mountains.
You feel the difference once you arrive.. there are many Tibetans living in and around Shangri-la.. lots of farm houses with big yak’s, temples and prayer wheels.. and, relaxed! no one’s in a hurry in this city, even the taxi drivers drive slow!

This city was supposed to be a transit city for us – moving on to the Tibetan high way (back door) through Tibetan villages to Sichuan province, BUT, we got stuck and dead-ended here because of all of the riots going on.. they wouldn’t sell bus tickets to foreign tourists! – claiming “the road is bad”, “there is no bus”, “please go away now”.
So instead, we decided to check out a little village 8 hours away called “Deqin“. This is the closest we could get to Tibet and decided to go and get the feel of things there.. BRRR-COLDER.
Deqin is over 3,000meters above sea level and there are some nice treks around – we on the other hand decided not to check them out while it was snowing!!! so instead we had a shak-shuka!! we met 2 lovely Israeli girls and decided we’re sick and tired of their food so the girls did the cooking, Ayal did the serving .

The bus back took us around 10 hours because we got stuck in a snow-jam..
Enough yaping, go check out the pics:
http://gallery.atpic.com/18497

Love,
NoaAyal

Tiger Leaping Gorge – Chinas Most Famous Trek

We’re spoiled. Coming from Nepal we know what a good trek is and how it should feel.

We weren’t getting the feeling on this one. Don’t get us wrong, there are some beautiful moments, but most of the time there’s nothing special going on.. So to any one we may be offending – GO TO NEPAL!

The name comes from an old myth saying that a tiger once leaped over this gorge (river bank valley

).. yeaaah…

There are two ways to see the gorge, there is the foreign tourist route (out door mountain climbi

ng) or the robotic chinese tourist way (

walking on a paved flat sidewalk at the bottom of the gorge).. We did the foreign tourist route after having enough with the Dali “mountain walk”.. – go read dali’s post!!!!!

Ok, we’ve told you enough.. go judge for yourself:
http://gallery.atpic.com/18496

Love,

NoaAyal

Lijiang – Mama Naxi’s City

This city reminded us very much of Dali – just more crowded with even more stores and even more chinese tourists! only this city had an earthquake a while ago, but only the old town survived, so they rebuilt the new town using the old town architecture techniques to make sure that next time there’s an earth quake the buildings will hold.. old school architecture!

We again went for walks around the old town.. saw some minorities dancing and a “dragon lake” but the highlight of lijiang is the hostel we stayed at, or better yet the Mama running it!
Before we tell you more about Mama Naxi you must know that when planing our trip to china everyone highly recommended “Mama Naxi” and after being their ourselves we understand why!
She calls herself Mama Naxi (Naxi is the large minority living in Lijiang), and she talks (shouts) about her self in third person: “You come Mama your good boy! Mama go shopping, you pay Mama!”
The highlight about staying at mama naxi’s is the 6pm dinner buffet! Every night she had an all you can eat buffet for 5 shekels! best meal in china!

we didn’t take many photos of Lijiang… but here’s the link:

http://gallery.atpic.com/18495

Love,
NoaAyal

Dali

***This is the 3rd time we’re entering this post, for various reasons it never got saved.. so excuse us for not being so energetic the 3rd time!! ***

Dali is famous for it’s old town area – to which thousands of chinese tourists flock for search of, yes you guest right, minority culture and shopping! in this case the “Bai” minority.
We enjoyed walking around the old town aswell and the great great big gates. (when there weren’t 1,000,000 chinese tourists in our way)..
We felt that we had enough of being behind great big walls so we went out on a “trek” in Dali’s mountain range. This is a national park up high on the mountain with a cement sidewalk along the entire park!!! so the chinese women can enjoy nature on high heals..

The next day we decided to check out the pretty lake that’s a short bike ride away from the old town.. we weren’t actually able to ride around it but we did get to come close to the water and whitnessed a bizzare fishing technique using a “cormorant” bird. they tie their neck so that they can’t swallow the fish and when it comes back on the boat the empty their mouths into a bucket.. sounds lovely doesn’t it?

Just before leaving Dali we decided to try a KUNG-FU lesson!! So we had a private lesson on one of the gates of the old city – (magnificent sourrounding!!) – we don’t remember the name of the Kung-Fu master, but we remember the name of his american wife – JULIE and their daughter – MAYA . BAD IDEA!! don’t get us wrong, we had a LOT OF FUN during the lesson but we paid for it for the next days feeling almost paralised and it hurt to move!!

check out the pics at:
http://gallery.atpic.com/18494

Love,
NoaAyal

Xishuanbanna

Think it’s hard to read the name?! you gotta hear how they pronounce it!!
After a 14 hour “sleeper” bus ride – this bus had 3 rows of beds (use your imagination on how it all fits, we’ll try and remember to take a pic next time) lets just say Ayal’s shoulders barely fit in the bed.. we got to Jinghong, the region’s capital.
This city doesn’t remind anything of what we’ve seen of china so far.. palm trees every where, the area is strongly influenced by Laos and Thailand (the street signs are in chinese and thai).
The main issue here, probably all over china lately, are the “minorities”. so we had to go out on a journey to see what all the fuss is about! we headed out to a small village 2 local bus rides away, one which runs only once a day.. off the bus and started walking (thank god there was some one with us walking to the village we wanted to go). after a 2 hour walk we arrived at “Yako” a small “minority” village. We were told that they are very friendly and welcoming to their homes.. their not! they’re mainly shy.. we found the only store in the village (check out the pics) and asked if they knew where we could sleep and after a few giggles the girl behind the counter started talking in english and offered us to stay at her family’s house! so we did!
There is a serious difference between the generations. in this house the grandparents, single mother and grand daughter live together. the grandparents are illiterate and dress in traditional clothes, the mother can read a little chinese and the daughter can speak some english and goes out with her boy friend on his “moto-ci-cleta” to parties. and we’re sitting in the middle enjoying the fire and dinner which we were served (the chicken came from the back yard)..
With our luck it rainned all night and didn’t stop until early afternoon so we were stuck with them a little longer and when it stopped raining we decided we’re ready to go back to the big city and didn’t want to take our chances with getting stuck in this terrible weather while trekking.
so we walked 2 hours back, waited for the famous once-a-day bus which didn’t show.. so ended up hitching a ride with some engineer that was working at this village. he was driving back to jinghong so we had a sweet ride in a pick up all the way back. this guy didn’t speak any english but was good with sign language and offered us to come eat with him. SURE, WHY NOT. next thing we know we’re the center of attention in a round table surrounded by his colleagues and boss which didn’t stop toasting. if you want to become a boss in china you better be able to drink! we had a huge dinner with lots of food we would have never ordered for ourselves.. they understood we were from israel and therefor did not order pork! there was chicken – heads, and legs, and a whole lot of spicy stuff.. let us tell you some thing about chinese table manners.. there aren’t! spitting on the floor, throwing garbage every where and drinking, a lot! of whatever the hell that liquor/vodka was..

From the minority village to big city outings!
Gun Bay!! (Cheers!)

go check out the pics:
http://gallery.atpic.com/18252

Love,
NoaAyal

Kunming – Seagull City

Kunming (Spring City) is the capital city of Yunnan and it’s supposed to have spring weather all year long.. guess what?? not this year!!
We tried hard finding some thing interesting to see in this big city, not that train and bus stations and 1,000,000 shops aren’t interesting (there’s even a chinese WALMART!!!), and what we found were tons of seagulls and professional kite flyer’s.
We found a reasonable priced hotel and were surprised on the good rate we got.. it all became clear after 10pm when all the clubs around our room started their parties and their LOUD speakers (our hotel gave us free ear plugs!) so the next morning we moved hotels.. but not before Noaa painted our beloved flag after it was sabotaged by some israeli-loving people..

There’s lots of food around.. and unlike the vegetarian Indians, Chinese people eat ANYTHING/EVERY THING! Thank god for our cousins (the muslims) which don’t eat pork/squid/chicken legs/that weird jelly thing we’re not sure what it was! that’s where we found our “shippudim” that we miss so much! Shukran!
Ayal thought his “savta yaffa” makes a lot of rice, be sure to check out the pic of the BARREL of rice which was prepared just for lunch! at a tiny restaurant..
We left the city as it started hailing on us down south to Xishuanbanna the semi-tropical county on the border with Laos.
Check out the pics at:
http://gallery.atpic.com/18090

Love,
NoaAyal

China at last!

We finally made it to China! (most of you know that we originally planned on travelling TO China, every thing on the way wasn’t really planned
After India, China is a refreshing change (clean, organized, tourist oriented) but it is extremely difficult to find an English speaker!
The boarder cross from Hong Kong to China (the real China) was smooth, so smooth that once you crossed the yellow line on the floor that marks the border there’s no more English! We swear, the guard spoke fluent english when he was 2 steps back on the Hong Kong side!!
We jumped on a sleeper train which was surprisingly comfortable, and came with clean sheets, blanket and a pillow! AND, snoring chinese.. loud!
We arrived to Guilin, nothing special to tell you about this city except that we will always remember it as the city in which we bought Noaa a jacket.
Made our way away from this rainy city to Yongshauo, a small touristic village where all the foreign tourists come to see the local culture and all the Chinese tourists come to see the foreign tourists.
Yangshauo is every mountain climbers dream come true, with small peaks in various of shapes and sizes all around the country side. We decided to mountain bike around them and take some good pics..
Impressions Show – Ayal says: Come to China just for this!
Noaa says: I told you we should go!!!
A performance that takes place ON the river directed by the director of “Hero” (+2 more unknown Chinese directors that don’t get any credit). There are about 400 people performing (all at once) on bamboo boats wearing fascinating lite suits. These are local village people and not professional performers and that makes it even more incredible!

*** Editors note: we’re logging into our blog through proxies (huh? never mind then!) and that takes away a lot of the editing options, so we can’t link to pictures and upload pictures to the blog.. you’ll have to use your imagination while you’re looking at the pics to understand what we’re talking about.. Big brother – damn you!!

So, check out the pics at:

http://gallery.atpic.com/18089

Love,
NoaAyal

We are BANNED!

This is a test posting a topic on our blog here in China..
It seems that China blocks BLOGS of any sort and many many other websites..
And if big brother is watching, Ayal will not get his hair cut until tibet is free!!!! (now we’ll really be banned

Love,
NoaAyal