Veni Vidi Vici: 2011/10

2011/10/27

Yangshuo

Yangshuo is a beautiful place. Due to some special geological happenings, the area is full of sylindrical hills. The fauna is different here and everything is green and feels like summer. The city feels quite small and when we eat and go out, everything is within a radius of 7.4 minutes of walking. After having a decent breakfast together, we went for a boat ride on the river. The location is famous for it's beauty and the backside of the 20 yuan bill displays this area. This explains why everybody is holding up cash when they're taken a picture of. The scenary was amazing and the people on the boats were all laughing and waving. Animals were swimming around us and the drivers were overtaking eachother. One thing that has become slightly annoying though is hooow touristic China is. Cause when we got off the boat in the middle of nowhere, there were stands selling the same souvernir crap as everywhere else. This also happens in a temple on a hill, or on a boat upstream the yangze river. It ruins the moment quite often.
In the evening Les, dutch Mark and I went for yet another boat ride. This was, however, in the dark with the purpose of watching a fisherman fish with Cormorants, a kind of bird of the family Phalacrocoracidae. The birds have a ring around the neck which prevents them from swallowing the fish they catch. If the fisherman sees that the bird has gotten some fish, he picks it up and shakes the catch out of the bird. At the end of the ride we got to see how much fish they had gotten and we could have one of the birds on our arm while shooting a photo. After the interesting event, we joined forces with the other lads and had some beers. Les and I ended up alone with the manager of a bar and a waitress and they taught us the dice game all the Chinese are playing. Playing this game requires the ability to count to at least ten ( sometimes more ). In noisy areas, like a disco, it can be difficult to hear eachother. That's why we also learned Chinese finger language for one to ten, using only one hand.The manager also beat me 14-1 in connect four, basicly destroying my self esteem since she was a small girl. After some white russians we were finally back at the hotel in the morning.

"Knock, knock, knock!". I got up and opened the door. A slightly angry Milly was outside. 15 minutes ago I should've been outside McDonalds in the center of town. I needed less than two minutes to put on my clothes and brush my teeth. At the rendevouz point the others were pointing and laughing, but I guess some of them were slightly pissed as well. I felt a bit bad, but was able to shake it off me and downed a couple of bottles of water on the way to the bikes. Apparently Les was pretty close to failing too, but managed to wake up 15 minutes earlier. We got some bikes from a local shop and headed out of the town on one of the country roads. We came to a small river and Derek decided to go for a swim. Milly was afraid that he would drown but he calmed her downed with some comforting words: "Take it easy. I'm a great swimmer. I swim at the lodge all the time.". "CRASH". On the way out to the water, the bamboo broke under him and he fell into the water. A perfect youtube moment and everybody was laughing until they ran out of tears. I wished we had that on tape. And we do! Marco taped the whole thing and we can enjoy it over and over again, forever and ever. Envying Derek swimming around in the river, I jumped in as well. Not wanting to bike with wet underpants, I decided to skinny dip. The others were objecting, but I didn't care. When we got out the water, Les said delicatly: "You know you guys had a little brokeback mountain moment there". We laughed and dried ourselvees with t-shirts. Putting them on the bike, wind and sun dried them fast and we could put them back on to maintain our paleness. After passing alot of rice fields and other pretty things we ended up at the main destination point of the trip, moon hill. A hill with a crest shaped hole. Four people climbed up to the top, Les and I being two of them, Jonas and scottish Lucy, spelled completly different in gaelic, were the two others. Some old ladies wanted to sell us water so they followed after us to the top as well. At the very top we had a great view and we took some nice pictures. There was a pole you could climb to get a feeling of beeing even higher up. It was kinda scary, cause it was long enough to make sure you'd fall off the hill if it broke. Luckily it didn't and I got my facebook profile picture. On the way down the women were still waiting for us and wanted to sell us their goods. Lesgot hold of a notebook one of them was carrying with her. It contained many brilliant stories, one of them comes here: "Lovely women! persistance paid off. Didn't want water but her character won me over! Dan London x" , hehe.

In the evening we saw a spectacular show with someting like 600 people involved. They had this massive pool and it was pitch black outside. It was a combination of alot of lights and alot of people with boats, singers, moats and folk dresses. It's hard to describe, but it was one of the coolest shows I've seen on the trip. The next day was really cool. We had signed up for cooking classes and wanted to learn how to make kung pao chicken, sweet & sour pork and dumplings. Three of the best dishes of my life. To kick start the whole event, we went to the market. The market was full of everything strange. From a net, much like the ones we have oranges in in Norway, of living frogs, to eals in buckets with water supply, cats stacked in cages, dogs in bigger cages and flamethrower barbequed dogs on hooks. Trying to take pictures of the dogs made a dude run after us with the flamethrower screaming: "money", so we got a bit scared. After that we went back and woked everything we had bought and it tasted deliciously. I now know the secret ingredient and will impress someone with less skills when I get back home. We got some pictures from the market, but I won't post them. In the evening we took a bumpy dark bus ride to the train station and took the train to my last destination in China: Hong Kong.

Photos:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111895625193387647956/20111019Yangshuo?authkey=Gv1sRgCKXt0-THpeeHBg

2011-10-19 Yangshuo

2011/10/23

Yangze Cruise

"Hello, this is your river guide Color speaking". A chinese girl with limited English skills and some pronounciation problems introduces herself. We're onboard the cruise ship and she gives a brief introduction. Before this, I broke a thermos in our room. It was pitch black in there and nowhere to find the light switch. I put y bag down on the floor and the sound of something breaking made me curse. W got a boy to show us the light switch and and mop it up. The group was having dinner on shore, so Marcus, my newest room buddy, and I had to leave the cleaning boy. Marc Tried to gesticulate that the kid could just close the door and leavce when he was done since we had to go. After a solid meal and restocking of beer, we went back to the boat. The kid was standing outside the door, guarding our room. Marc's sign language had given the kid a different order than he expected which made us feel a bit bad but also made us laugh. At 20.30 our river guide wanted to give us a briefing over the next few days. That is the most waste of time so far on this trip. She gave some information I will never forget though. "If you've counted the life boats, and there aren't that many, that's ok, our captain is really handsome. And experienced." Jonas and I cracked up and started crying, doing our best to hide our faces. Derek and I realized we're closing in on departure time so we leftthis nightmare and went ashore to get some extra beers, just in case.

Turns out, like everywhere else, the cruise was a scam and they charged you for everything, even breathing. You could not sit anywhere without paying for it, you couldn't drink water from your bottle anywhere on the ship, and their "packages" where you pay for all-inclusive exclude everything you want. Who wants to pay for drinking as much non-alcoholic beer and wine of the house as you want? We felt like they were trying to rape us all the time and it pissed us off. It didn't get better when they showed up in my room and wanted 80 yuan for the thermos. Turned out they had a price list in the drawer over all the things in the room. Shitty TV 2000 yuan, remote control 300 etc. They make money if they manage to get you to break things. After trying to explain the situation to a girl with limited english skills, we agreed to continue tomorrow with my guide as translator. We played some cards and went to bed fairly early.

The next day started with a good breakfast and then an excursion to the ghost city. The city is in fact a temple with some interesting features. During the cultural revolution they burnt down the temple of the god of heaven, cause he was only nice, whereas the temple of the god of the underworld was spared, because they feared him. Proving once again that it's better to be feared than loved. There were some horrible statues of people being tortured for various sins in the temple. On the way out of the temple you could chose which bridge you wanted to cross. One would give you long life, one would give you money. Needless to say, I chose long life:). On the way down you had yet another chance of buying a pig's face to chew on. We settled with lunch onboard the ship.

The evening started with a nice argument in the room with me, Milly and 3-4 crew members. Apparently they wanted to fight for their thermos and they had set the price to 80 yuan, roughly 8 euros. I told them my story and refused to pay, so after alot of hassling, they admitted some guilt and wanted to split it fifty-fifty. I still refused and Milly settled the score with them. The whole situation pissed me off a bit and I went to the guys for some cards to get in a good mood again. The crew had some dancing show in the evening that was ok enough, but afterwards we wanted to have some beers. Since you had to pay with your arms and legs to get drinks onboard, we wanted to drink our own beer. We ended up going up on the sundeck. Only catch was, there was no sun anymore. Clever as we were, we brought with us our flash lights and sat on the top of ship in the pitch black environment with head lights. The wind blew away our cards so we had to make a wind wall with empty beer cans and the help of a sign reminding us not to jump overboard. Turned out the whole situation was really memorable. The view was nice, alot of lit up cities along the river and going under the bridges at night was cool. We went to bed when it got too cold.

Our second excursion was a trip up one of the streams. The river is now fifty meters higher due to the new dam, so old valleys have now turned into rivers and villages and towns are below water. That makes it possible for boats to bring tourists like me upstream. It was quite cool and resembled Norwegian fjords. In one of the mountain sides there was a coffin. Someone decided it would be a nice resting place, so the dude has been lying there for a thousand years or so. The last part of this trip was done in small wooden boats driven by local chinese. They bleong to one of the 56 minorities in China. The local guides were singing while the men were roing and we were filming. All in all a nice experience. I wish I could sing. In the afternoon I had a power nap and got woken up by a phone call. It was mr Cheng, manager of the ship, who wanted to discuss the matters of a thermos. Being half asleep I started explaining before i realized that Derek was playing with me. I hate him. He laughed alot. In the evening it was a talent show and some of the chinese guests did karaoke. After that it was dancing and I managed to drop kick an old chinese lady. MAde me feel bad. That night we passed through the dam and those ship locks are massive! Everything in China i big and during this cruise, we saw many king size bridges being built. Each one of them worth more than Norway spend on their roads each year. China is growing, Everything is BIG, the people not so much:).

In the morning we got out of the boat and took bus to Guilin. From there to Yangshuo we took an overnight train. On the busride, Les and I played trivial pursuit and I learned a new joke:
Do you know the difference between a scot and a rolling stone?
A rolling stone says: "Hey! You! get off of my cloud!"
Whereas a scot says: "Hey! McCloud! Get off of my ewe!" (Ewe being a female sheep ( I learned that in the game ) )
The time in the train was killed with card games and Derek's hilarious lango ap for his Iphone. ATTENTION! Mom, dad, Kristian, everyone else. The rest of this paragraph contains vulgar language and you may jump to the next paragraph without missing out on anything important. His ap is hilarious. He has a list of different pick up lines, insults and xxx insults in Chinese. Some of our favourites: "If I wanted to hear from an asshole, I would've farted", "suck my dick and wash my car".

We arrived in Yangshuo which is a truly beautiful place!

Some photos:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111895625193387647956/20111011XianChengdu?authkey=Gv1sRgCNrDroKbzYm8wAE

2011-10-11 Xian-Chengdu

https://picasaweb.google.com/111895625193387647956/20111016ChengduYangzeCruise?authkey=Gv1sRgCKulzZ6rvuCp5QE

2011-10-16 Chengdu-Yangze Cruise

https://picasaweb.google.com/111895625193387647956/20111018YangzeCruiseYangshuo?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ_Jj_iO8-CBigE

2011-10-18 Yangze Cruise-Yangshuo

https://picasaweb.google.com/111895625193387647956/20111019Yangshuo?authkey=Gv1sRgCKXt0-THpeeHBg

2011-10-19 Yangshuo

2011/10/20

Chengdu-Chongqing

We landed smoothly in Chengdu. The only action occured when Sarah, one of the two Danes, realized she had forgotten the purse with her passport on board the aircraft. The team of four did not waste a second, and while waiting for her outside our bus, the four of us improvised a table with chairs out of a flag post and four luggage trolleys. Our epic game of euchre is still on and Mark and I are still in the lead. The first thing we did in Chengdu was a walk in the park. This park is somehow special, because anyone who wants to can pick up a mic and sing and dance. The sound is loud and their standing so close to eachother that the sound of two and three of them interfere. This was not a pleasent experience for my ears. You could also find a future partner in the park. Either you, or your parents, can put up a laminated sheet of paper with requirements for your spouse. "170cm, makes more than 5000 yuan a month, does not sneaky ball, etc". No pic - no reply, the singles in the group had to continue their search elsewhere. The highlight of this little excursion was the bumper cars. I can't really remember when I drove one of these the last time, but it's a while ago. It was much fun crashing into the others as much as I could for three minutes.

"This region is famous for four things! Can you guess what?", Milly asks. We're now in Sichuan, a province south-west in China. Turns out the answer is pandas, opera, spicy food and spicy people. The people like to eat spicy food, so they sweat alot. Sweating alot makes their skin clean, so the girls are famous for their pretty skin. Also, the people here are leasuring alot, so working hours end at 14.00 and it's time to go to the park and play mahjong. The day passed and in the evening we went to see an opera. The highlight was a dude that made shadow images of horses, rabbits, birds etc with his hands and some dudes changing masks very quickly. After this, Derek, Les and I went on a mission: to find beers and panda hats. Everywhere they sell these pretty cool panda hats. We got both and went happily back home to bed after trying to eat dog. Trying to explain that you want dog by barking at a chinese street food selling guy is not easy.

Waking up, going to the bus, arriving at a Panda sanctuary! Many people may have seen a panda or two at a zoo, but 20 different ones at the same day? I think not!:) Surprising the group with our super cool panda hats created some laughter and then we set out to see the pandas. They are some lazy ass bears that sit there eating bamboo all day. They are pretty cute. Derek with his 133 kilos and panda hat was actually the biggest panda of them all haha. The baby pandas would probably be a dream pet for every little girl. Our guide told as a story about a chinese kid that loved pandas so much he spray painted his big dog into a panda. People thought he was walking around with a panda so the cops put him into jail for one week. Apparently the morale of the story was that chinese take their pandas seriously. By the way, do you know how you can see that the panda wives never do the dishes properly? They always have two black eyes;) I kinda made that one up myself with some help of a joke I knew from earlier. I'm proud.

After the giant pandas, a giant buddha awaited us. A massive sitting dude, chisseled into the mountain side. He's looking over the intersection point of three rivers, making sure that the boat men are safe. I don't believe it works, but hey, it's an awesome statue. When we got tired of him we left the dude there to sit some hundred years more and headed off to the monastary. The monastary was nice and the rainy weather said play cards! I don't know how many rules we broke that evening but I guess drinking beer, gambling, cursing and offering empty beer cans and trash to a fat buddha statue won't improve our karma haha. The next day we would check out the mountain the monastary was at the bottom of.

Most of the group wanted to make the regular trip, but the three musketeers wanted to reach the summit as well. We got up at 5.30 and headed down to the bus station. After a two hour bus ride we were dropped off at the bottom of the summit and we went to the line to take the cable car to the summit. Funny thing. In the line we saw this chinese lad with a cap that had a norwegian flag on it and "drunken" written under it. That pretty much sums up Norway haha. It was a hazy day with rain and we didn't see shit at the top so we might call the early bird project a failure, but at least we tried. We walked down and passed some monkeys on the way to the bus. The bus took us to the place where the others started the regular trip and we started a couple of hours after the others. A lot of beautiful signs on this hike. For instance a list over socialist values. Some of them are pretty good and apply for alot of Norwegians. Espescially "Take hard work as an honor, regard loving ease and hating work a disgrace". Some of the chinglish signs up there were also great. One of my favourites so far: "Caution aggressive monkeys here. don't joke the monkeys". The scenery on this part of the hike was amazing, and the reward at the end was awesome! The joking monkey zone! A small loop with some bridges and paths full of active monkeys. They did everything they could to get hold on whichever article you might have accessable, that being a cap, bottle, umbrellla, food etc. We had each our monkey stick, a one meter bamboo stick, and with that one we were to defend ourselves. It was shitloads of fun and one of them got Derek. A massive monkey jumped him and we were all greatly amused watching him being helped by the old monkey chasing ladies. After a fairly long hike back to the bus stop, we were all done for and our calves would be very soar the next day.

After another night with cards in the monastary, we set off to Chongqing the next morning. There we got our tickets and entered the steamer haha. An interesting cruise on the Yangze river awaited us.

PS: Tracks are available.

2011/10/19

My tracks have been updated. Check them to the right here

2011/10/11

Xian

"Good morning everyone!". "Did everybody sleep well?". Milly is making sure we're ready for a new train ride to Xi'an. The ride is problem free, and Mark and I managed to equalize 0-5 to 5-5 in the game euchre against our arch enemies Les and Derek. Finally in Xi'an we start going for a walk in the city. It's a cute place and I really don't get the feeling of being in a city ith a population of eight million, twice as many as in Norway. We had tour through the muslim quarter, there are muslim chinese, descendants of silk road merchants from the west having their fun at the end station.The city wall of Xi'an is not so shitty. In fact it's the best preserved wall in whole of China. Oncem up there, we got bikes to cycle around the thing. Thinking we're clever and it will be fun, Mark and I get a tandem bike. The bike on the city wall is a shitty bike. In fact. it's the shittiest bike I've ever used. We had some fun in the beginning though. The pedals were out of sync, so half of the energy went to keep balance.Then after 6 km we got a flat back tire and I had to run next to the bike. After 9 km I had to start pushing the bike and finally at 13 km we were back at the start, having amused alot of people on the way. I needed the excercise though, cause eating and drinking is fattining me up. In the evening we had dinner and the quad group went beer hunting. In the lobby Mark, Les and I lost 100 yuan each to Derek in Texas Hold'em and Mark and I are currently in the lead 6-5 in our epic game.

"Guys, have you eaten breakfast?". "You have to eat breakfast, because inside the terracotta museum there won't be any food". "You will then be hungry, and then you will complain!". Hahahaha, Milly's striking logic makes us all laugh all the time. But fair enough, she tells us everything we need to know, and then some. One hour outside of Xi'an is the famous terracotta army, a bunch of live size ceramic figures in battle formation. Seeing them is truly impressive and it's one of the coolest cultural things so far. They are one of the greatest archeological finds ever and you understand why when you have them in front of you. Back at the hotel, internet and a power nap awaited. 7 pm was hot pot time! sitting around a big pot with boiling water, you throw whatever you wanna eat into it and then fish it up after a couple of minutes. None of us being remotly close to being chop sticks experts, the fishing part tend to be quite amusing. After dinner Les, Derek and I ended up at a bar with few people. Those at the table next to us had emptied a bottle of Jameson, wine and some beers. The table looked like ground zero with cards, poker chips, peanuts and sigarets all over the floor and table. One of the three were crying and they seemed to be in shitty shape. We laughed alot and were glad it wasn't us and went on playing cards. Les taught us a new card game and we went home around 1 o'clock. Derek in desperate need of his beauty sleep, was not looking forward to enter his room too much. He shares it with a dutch Mark, Mark B, who snores like a locomotive haha. Adding insult to injjury, he had put the chain on the door so Derek was locked out. "Why are you locking me out man?!", Derek screams in the corridor of the hotel. I laughed and went to bed with a smile on my face. Tomorrow it was time to fly to Chengdu. Domestic flight in China. I couldn't wait

2011/10/08

Beijing-Shanghai

Spending ten days in Beijing has been awesome! Beijing is truly a cool place to be. The time has gone by so quickly and I've had so much fun. China is different, that's for sure, but they got their own thing going here. Squatting is a resting position and a crapping position for the chinese, whereas I myself find the position energy demanding and not food-baby producing. The chinese kids wear trousers without a groin so that they can do their thing on the street where the parents catches the result in a newspaper and throws it in a bin. The chinese I meet are for the most part really friendly and in public offices and stores there is no lack of staff. In the post office two employees helped out me and Tomtom getting all our stuff wrapped and shipped to Europe and they did an excellent job and didn't charge us extra for all the hassle. Also in stores they are many and helpful. Makes you wonder, when you compare it to electronic stores in Norway where they have a 14 year old helping out a line of 50 customers who's been waiting an hour.

Sunday, October 2nd, I hooked up with my new group. A bunch of nice people, young and old, couples and singles, big and small and we went out for dinner. Since I had seen most of Beijing already, I did a couple of things on my own. Wednesday we set out for Shanghai. My room mate for this trip is an Englishman called Mark. He's 51 years old and from Norwich. In the overnight train to Shanghai we shared compartment with four Chinese people and had alot of fun. Their little English and our crappier chinese didn't were no obstacles for having fun. Exchanging chicken feet for Norwegian chocolate seemed like a nice deal until we started eating the things. We had fun in the train, playing cards, having beers and chatting. At ten o'clock the lights went off, so no Siberian party train here. In the morning I had noodles for breakfast, beat Mark in chess and ate my oreo bisquits. Good start of the day! We got off in Shanghai and Milly, our funny, little chinese guide, got cabs for us to the hotel.

The first day in shanghai was great! We had lunch and went for a walk through the city. Milly knows alot so she also guides us like a regular tour guide and doesn't only bring us to food and hotels. We went to the Shanghai museum which was great. The museums in China have so far been awesome so it seems like their way subsidizing stuff works, compared to Norway. Chinese communism results in the best metros, cleanest streets and best museums I've ever seen. To support this I've even got my own little commi-cap now haha. After the museum we went home and had a power nap before dinner. Derek, a massive giant of a Canadian, Les, a scottish born Englishman and myself went out for some drinks after dinner. We ended up in a German biergarten and had a Paulaner each. That was the single most expensive beer so far, 80 yuan, which is roughly 10 euros. And it was half a litre. We got redemption however, because asking an Indian/middle eastern looking dude and his two Chinese friends for direction to a cheap bar, they ended up taking us with them to a club. It turned out the dude had his 25th birthday that day and that he was filthy rich. He had rented a night club and we went into a skyscraper and took the lift up to some floor and suddenly there we were. We paid another 80 yuan, but this time we could drink as much as we wanted :D there were maybe 9 gogo girls dancing on the tables and bars. Live music in the form of Akon's support band, according to Derek, and some dancers. The night club had everything I don't have including style. I was standing there in my free hostel t-shirt I got in Beijing, stained hiking trousers and hiking shoes. Massively underdressed compared to the others haha. But we had shitloads of fun and went to bed in the morning.

Day 2 in Shanghai. Pretzl from the grocery store for breakfast and then a walk through the bund, a famous street in Shanghai. Milly told us about the stuff around us and in the end we were at a small square with classic chinese buildings. Shanghai is totally different from Beijing. If it wasn't for all the asians running around, I would never have thought it was an asian city. Every building is very modern and western. We relaxed a bit in a pleasure garden before Derek, Les and I went to the third tallest building in the world, Shanghai World Financial Center. It's located on the east side of the river that parts Shanghai. This placce was all farmland and now it's full how high rising buildings and concrete. It's all so strange. The center has the highest observation platform in the world and it was really cool standing up there looking down on other massive buildings. It was like being in a plane right after take off except from the fact that you had large windows and infinite time to check out the surroundings. The toilets in the bottom of the builfings were also great! The seats were heated and you could get your ass and/or privates flushed afterwards. The pressure and temperature of the water could be adjusted and if you pressed the button twice, the beam would oscilate. Comfortable and paper saving. Only thing the toilet lacked was an air dryer and some history magazines.
We hooked up with the others and went for dinner. It was an early dinner, because we were going to see some Chinese acrobats. My god that were some good acrobats! I think it was the Chinese olympic team plus some more. They were jumping, kicking, changing hats and driving motorbikes 5 in total!) in a global shaped cage. That performance was some of the best/funniest I've seen. Highly recommend checking that stuff out if you ever go to Shanghai! Cheap as we were, we enjoyed beer we brought with us while watching it haha. The performance was over and we headed back to the hotel with the tube, that is everybody except me, Marco, a swiss dude that sent his stuff with his wife back to the hotel, and danish guy that did the same with his girlfriend. We went out to have a drink. Like the day before we exited the metro station and asked some random kids where to go. They said "follow us!" and we ended up at this posh nightclub called G+ on the 7th floor in a shopping mall. And oh my god! We thougt this would be expensive, but what the hell. We can afford one beer. But 90% of the girls in this club looked like models. One girl came in, hotter than the previous one. Alot of rich Russians and Chinese were hanging out here. Everybody very fine in their clothing ... and us. Me in my commi cap, hostel shirt (can't change clothes every day), hiking trousers and shoes haha. Man, that place made me feel malplaced. But hey, who cares? Never ever have I ever seen such a collection of girls in one place. So we stayed for a couple of drinks. And guess what, they cleaned a small stage and up jumped a little girl and started singing. It was like being at a concert and it was awesome! Live music again haha. How do we run into these places? I have no idea. Maybe this is Shanghai. At least two ou of two nights have had live performance. Some black dancers from the states did some Michael Jackson stuff which was fairly good but also fairly gay. They didn't have too much clothes on. But if the price I have to pay for dancing next to 50 young lucy lius is to look at a couple of brown six-packs then hey, I'm up for that. I was pretending it was beer. I chatted a bit with one of them and it turned out that they were all hookers or gold diggers haha, but still though, incredibly beautiful! We headed home in the morning and the next day it was time to head off to Xi'an and the terracotta warriors!
See you later Shanghai! I'll be back loaded with money one day!

Enjoy some photos:
link: https://picasaweb.google.com/111895625193387647956/20110917SiberiaIrkutsk?authkey=Gv1sRgCIbV99uIn9O3PQ