Macau and the Storm

But first of all, I'm still alive, thx for the request, but more about that later.

I was in Macao yesterday, an old Portuguese colony. Nowadays, Macao is more like the little Las Vegas of the region, lots of casinos, etc. can be found there. But even if one is not interested in gambling, it's a place worth visiting. You can see lots of old colonialism time buildings over there, which are mixed with Asian style ones. Hence interesting combinations exist, like a temple next to a cathedral. Or, due to the modern times, a temple included in a casino... Macao is also a place for shopping and getting Portuguese food, as I heard, unfortunately, more or less, all restaurants were closed... or just served Asian style food.

On the way back, I could experience the first signs of typhoon 'Nesat', which hit Hong Kong today with a strength of 8 out of 10. While the sea was wild last night, ferries were still running. Today more or less everything was shut down, no boats going, just a few sights open. But the worst part was, that Thursday is the day, when all the museum are closed, hence there was not really anything to do. I just went to the cinema and through town... but even half of the shops were closed.

Before leaving Hong Kong tomorrow, I will try to go to Lantau, where I want to visit an old temple and a fishing village, called the 'Venice of Hong Kong', as houses are built on stilts.

And after that it is time to leave Asia; next destination will be Australia... so more stories from there will come.

How to prepare Hong Kong

After almost 17hrs in planes I have reached Hong Kong. All I can say so far is that I love it. The one day I’ve spent here has been better then the complete Russia trip. But from the beginning:

My first stop was Beijing, but just for 3hrs, before I had to get on board again to fly to Hong Kong. Carrier this time was Air China. I get the feeling I’m doing Airline checks these years; it’s about the 20^th company I’ve used and still not finished. Anyways, flights were good and food was an introduction to Asia including seaweed, etc. Once in Hong Kong I went straight for my Hostel, where I got a 5m² room, no kidding, picture will follow. As it was already night, I just went out to see the nightlife. It’s amazing, all these super-colorful, blinking commercials, people everywhere, shops open till midnight. That is just so cool, so instead of just getting some food I went out for hours.

This morning I just walked through the city towards the waterfront. Once there I walked down the Boulevard of Stars, it’s like the Hollywood Walk of Fame, just with Asian stars. Then I took the ferry and went to the ‘real’ Hong Kong and finally took the 123 year old tram up to ‘The Peak’, the sightseeing mountain of the city. And the view from atop is just gorgeous. I can’t really describe that. Like the whole city. For me it is kind of a mixture between, Vancouver, L.A. and Cape Town, with Asian ingredients.

I stayed up there till it was dark, but in the meantime I went to see Madame Tussauds, again with mostly Asian characters on display.

Even if I couldn’t find any good words for the view at daytime, there are less for nighttime, so I just say: splendiferous. You can see some pictures at the end of the post. (Due to the weather they are not close to what you can see with your eyes, but one gets the idea ;-)). Finally I took the tram back down and walked all the way home through Kowloon… just a really good day. I can suggest everyone to get to Hong Kong once and stay a little while, there is so much to see and do here… I hardly have enough time to see what I want to see.

Plan for tomorrow is to go to Macau, if there is no storm coming up…

So, here are the promised pictures:

To Sum It Up

I haven't had time to work on the pictures so far...

The last night in St. Petersburg started probably with our worst idea ever, an all-you-can-eat-&-drink competition at Pizza Hut... after that we all felt like we were ready to explode at the spot. :-P

But summarizing Russia, I can definitely say, that St. Petersburg is much more beautiful than Moscow, people are much more welcoming and willing to talk to you. I assume that Moscow can be a very interesting tourist spot as well, but therefore, one should make plans on what to do, etc. before arrival, cause the city is so huge. And with our 'program' we sometimes haven't had more time, at certain places, than for a quick photo-stop.

Food in Russia is not very exciting... either it is completely tasteless, dry or over-seasoned with dill. Why dill, I have no idea, but it seems like that is the only existing spice...

Nevertheless, seeing Russia was quite an experience, but it is not a country I wanna go again soon... Maybe taken the Trans-Siberian would be quite an experience (and maybe a better one than this trip) but there are other places to explore before that ;-)

Next plan is to already leave Germany again on Sunday. The destination will be Brisbane, Australia with a short (3 days) stopover in Hong Kong.

But before leaving, I still have to work a little ( with less time every second), so I better keep on doing that ;-)

St. Petersburg

As unpleasant as Moscow was, the better is St. Peterburg. People are much friendlier here and, the best part, there is lots of interesting stuff to do and see over here. Besides the usual work we had to do, including lectures, bustours, etc., we went to some pretty interesting museums, like the 'Ermitage'. That is the biggest Museum in Russia and totally worth visiting. Another recommendable place is 'Peterhof', a suburb of St. Petersburg. Special about this place is a castle that was built there. From the size it is comparable to Verssailles, with huge parks.

But back to St. Petersburg, the city itself is much more beautiful than Moscow, which just felt crowed and ugly.... Nightlife here is also quite fun. The other night we went to a club, where everybody is dressed in bunny-costumes, so we got ears at the entrance, and they celebrate New Year ever night. That was really a weird place to be, but big fun, like the whole night. We continued to 4 plus X other clubs and came back at 5... which was not smartest idea, when you have to get up at 8 for lectures... but, who cares???

Unfortunately our time in St. Petersburg is almost over. Today is our last day, before we will be going back to Germany tomorrow. Once back again, pictures will follow, until then:

с Новым годом!!!

Pictures from Moscow

Here are the promised pictures from Moscow:

Kremlin

Tsar Cannon

One of the seven sister Stalinist style

Lenin

Some random houses :-P

That might actually be the best selection of pictures there are... or of what I've seen ;-)

Muscovite Times

Week's gone, as is Moscow. Right now we're sitting in the train to St. Petersburg.

We've spent the days in Moscow at the university, with lectures about the development of the city and area. Furthermore, we've done some bus trips around city to 'experience' the urbanity... Both were not really interesting activities, so I keep that chapter short. Just saying we 'learnt' a lot about things we already knew...

Besides we were doing some sightseeing... but there is not that much, unless you like monumentality buildings from the communism time. So to say, Moscow is not the best touristic spot I would recommend. Best parts were the evenings when we went for bowling, airhockey or just hanging around.

Another weird fact is, people here are quite unfriendly and unwilling to speak English, even if they are able to do so (which is not very often the case, unfortunately).

Well, I expected this post being much longer, but that would be just boring for everybody, cause there are not really good stories to tell... Gonna give you some impressions of the city next time, cause the connection in the train is quite slow...

St. Petersburg is supposed to be the much more interesting place and that's basically what we're hoping for... can't really get much more boring ;-)

Flying to Moscow

This is the first post from Russia. After I spent almost a day on the plane I finally got to Moscow. The first step was to get from Cape Town to Dubai. Fight was okay; just the onboard service was lacking quality. They forgot when serving dinner… and after they figured that out, they were almost about to collect it again. Something similar happen with the breakfast, just with the little difference, that I never got served… wtf?

Dubai Airport itself is quite busy, lots of shops, but not really interesting, just quite expensive. The second flight was also quite okay, they only forgot to serve me drinks that this time… well seems like Emirates isn’t as good as their commercials…

After my group arrived we all took a bus to our hotel, which is huge… consisting of 4 towers with a complete number of 4600 rooms. It’s like living in a small city in a house. Due to our lack of Russian, the only thing we were able to eat so far was a kebab… well, at least we got food.

Yesterday, we visited the Kremlin, the old core of Moscow. Been to some churches, saw some graves, like the one Ivan ‘The Terrible’ and went to the Red Place probably the most famous sight of Moscow, the Red Square. This is the church one might know from the start screen of Tetris. In the afternoon we heard a lecture in Russian (simultaneously translated to German) at the Lomonossov University. Well let’s say it was ‘interesting’. Hopefully the tourism part will be the bigger one for the next days… these lectures are not really that cool… but we’re here to work, eh?