Shrine? What game are we talking about?

MERRY IS HERE

*grabs Merry*

I don't know either :o

It did. Normally if I say I'll lie down for an hour it is exactly that. But this odd warm weather is making me all tired a lot. :}

LittleJulez wrote:MERRY IS HERE

*grabs Merry*

I don't know either :o

JULIEE
* glomps *
How've you been?

oh I was playing zelda BoTW

River, I actually thought so xD

I am doing good lately, trying to work on a research paper while working a little, meeting many friends :)

And how about you? How was China? Tell me all about it!

Oh I wouldn't even know where to start! It was awesome, but I must admit that up to now, I think that China is my least favourite when it comes to Asian countries I visited. It felt like a sort of second rate Japan, you know? #spoiledbrat

Anyway, the nature is awesome, I wish I'd seen more of it. But it turns out that when you have a 3-week holiday and you spend 2 weeks of it in one country, you have way less time than you'd think. In the end we have only visited Beijing, Shanghai and Zhangjiajie. I think we already made a mistake by staying in Beijing one day longer than planned, but there was so much we needed to see there! But like I said, I wish we'd have had the chance to visit more places outside of the city. Now we've pretty much only seen the mountains in Mutianyu (close to Beijing, where we visited the Wall) and in Zhangjiajie. The latter is splat-damn in the middle of the mountains, so we'd have to have been total nutjobs to have missed the mountains there
You may have heard of Zhangjiajie, by the way! It's where Hallelujah Mountain is - you know, the floating mountains from the movie Avatar? It's been filmed there. Quite awesome, but very, very crowded. There's also a glass bridge over one of the canyons there. We tried to go there, but you have to be a Chinese national to book, and the girl who booked for us misunderstood, I guess... so we ended up on Tianmenshan, a massively high mountain with glass paths attached to some parts of the mountain wall. Sounds more impressive than it really was, 'cause you couldn't see jack through them. Besides, it was a very dreary day, and you couldn't really see far, either. In such circumstances a high mountain becomes rather boring
Anyway, the way up was nice. We thought the girl booked the cable car for us, but another surprise: we only had the cable car on the way down. On the way up, we had to take several buses. Which was hilarious, because the road was particularly winding with a lot of sharp bends, and the driver couldn't care less
Yep, loads of fun.

Anyway, China was very interesting, but North Korea was more special I guess. I mean, we couldn't really prepare because no one knows anything about the country, and the way of traveling was completely new to us. We were even honored with two guides
And they made us stay in the most luxurious of hotels. Didn't really like that part. Could've been way cheaper without that ridiculous puppet show. Just like the food - we couldn't choose anything ourselves, but every day, both for lunch and dinner, they filled up the entire table for us! It was way more than we could ever eat. Such a waste... But a very interesting experience indeed. The landscape is more beautiful than you could imagine. And to be fairly honest, Pyongyang is a pretty impressive city as well! You should see their metro stations.... And the jeogori (Northern name for hanbok, Korean traditional dress) I bought there. The funny thing is that my South Korean hanbok (exactly the same thing, but I got very dirty looks when I called it that in North) is way more sober than my cheery North Korean one. My Southern one is dark blue, white and dark red with a green accent (I had it made that way, with advise of the tailor), while my Northern one is bright pink and bright yellow with accents of other bright colors. You'd expect it the other way around, wouldn't you?

I should be working on those blogs now, so in a short while you can check out the pictures. I hope to get around to translating it one day

Wow sounds super awesome! Just by reading it I really want to go there, it seems like a very special experience! When I think about China I kind of don't think about nature, but now that I dig deeper... Of course there is great nature!!!

About the mountains, what a pity that the girl who booked for you made that many mistakes :o

A hotel too luxurious :D? Well, alright, haven't heard anything like that so far, but I totally get ya

What do you think of when you think about China?
I'm sure they have so much more to offer than just te mountains I've seen... for one, I'd love to see the rice and/or tea plantations. 4 times I've been to Asia, and I still haven't seen any.

Still, if you ever were to visit Eastern Asia, I'd really advice you to visit Japan first. It's got that awesome, authentic Asian feeling, but without the disgusting and amazingly annoying parts. A little less racist, too. A very fun and beautiful way to get acquainted with the continent, and after that you can decide for yourself whether you'd like to see more.

Yeah well, for me it was. I'm fine with what we had in Salzburg, you know? I prefer authentic experiences, and staying in a hotel like that in Asia is not exactly authentic. The first night in North Korea we had fries with our dinner, you know. They were cold, but still fries... We stayed in Kaesong for one night, which is close to the border with South Korea. There we stayed in a traditional Korean hotel ("the quality of this hotel may be way less than what you're used to", the brochure said) and that was the best experience EVER. It was small and cute, it actually had a garden, and the bathroom was state-of-the-art. It was authentic and comfortable. Too bad we only stayed there for one night
But if the border ever opens for tourists to roam freely, I'll definitely be going back there!

Hm... I think about rice, soya, the chinese wall, the himalaya, dojos, eating sitting on the floor, traditional clothes, temples, crowded cities, city lights, cheap food and clothing, child work, metro stations, rude and loud people, noise in general, the terrakotta army, ... stuff like that I guess?

I would definitely go for Japan first!
The people seem nicer and I know a few friends (including you hehe) who have been there and recommended it. Sooo yea.

Well, don't forget I was born in Asia, even if nobody knows that country xD So I know a little about it there. Even though Kazakhstan is very different to China and Japan I suppose. Also because it belonged to the Old Soviet Union.

Indeed, what we had in Salzburg was good enough :)

Aw that Korean hotel sounds really cute ^.^