Shanghai

Accommodation: Alex penthouse, Xinzha Lu 88, Simen Lu (en suite room in the living room with A/C)
Sights: Art Museum, Jintao Tower, People’s Square, Shanghai Art Museum and the park around it, Yu Garden
Places worth of visit:

• M 50 district, re-use of grey fields for the use of galleries, studios, any kind of art workshops. Walk in the nearby neighborhood.
• Banana leaf restaurant. Thai cuisine for all flavors, mango and coconut dishes, huge crabs

Our highlights:

• Sky Club, John Digweed on the decks. Chinese poshy ravers do not dance. Just champagne around the table.
• German electro live band @ Logo Bar. Shelter No.5 after hour, banker party.
• East Shanghai International Hospital for toe first aid, stitches etc
• Food and fruits: HongKongnese, Vietnamese, Beijing duck, duck tongue, chilly chopped frogs, sushi, street cooking,
• Old market stands between Yu Garden and People’s Square. Real Shanghainese old neighborhood, like the ones they have in all chasing movie scenes
• Massage Xinthianti area. Posh place, worth the money. Thanx-la Leo!
• KTV or karaoke night. Incredible evening. After 2 hours we were fighting for who gets the microphone. "Born to be wild, breathe, no woman no cry in the repertoire of Dima

Hospitality was much better than expected by Alex and swiss flatmates, Steven & Valerie, welcomed us so warmly. Sorry that we ate all your Lindt chocolates, but we got the munches after so long time ;) Chechen-la for everything. C u soon in Greece-la, it will be nice to host you!!!

Beijing (a whole week in November)

Accommodation: 9 Dragons Guest house (15€ double en suite)

Sightseeing: Tienanmen Square, Monument of the People's heroes, Temple of Heaven, Forbidden city, Palace Museum, Old city (Liunlichang street), Olympic stadium, Olympic aquarium

Places worth of visit:
1. “Waiting for Godot” café (4-24 Jiadaokou east st., dongcheng) for notebooks, internet, table games, cool people, seek for greek sayings on the wall
2. Close market stands around Dengshikou subway station (0,5-1 € all food things like gyros, spinach pie, jelly fish suvlaki, seaweed)
3. Beijing Duck at Da Dong restaurant, cozy poshy place (22€ whole duck)
4. Street full of small nice bars and pubs (learn the dice games), a bit touristic though (2€ beer, 4€ drink)
5. Oldest pharmacy in the country situated in the old city, emperor used to get his herbs from here [a part of an animal used as natural Viagra since ages (1.000€ per gram)]
6. Airport (6€ by metro) keep lighters in checked-in luggage

Highlights

• Custom made bike tours around the sights (Quite many kms per day, as blocks are more or less size of NY)
• Trekking 12km on the Great Wall from Jandling to Simatai. You pay both entrance and exit unless you want to walk 4 hours back ;)
• Scam at tea houses or handicrafts(watch out whoever speaks good English and spends more than 2 hours with you around)
• Hot pot at a restaurant and many street cooking stands
  

Ulaanbaatar – Beijing by taxi, train, “jeep”, sleeper bus

We got once again train and a usual Kupe to reach the borders and we arrived there early in the morning. Then you have to find quickly some local jeeps that they will pass you from the borders, as no one is allowed to pass on foot. Many hours of waiting as the whole train was embarked in tens of these jeeps that they run almost without petrol, one is pulling the other. Our driver gave his seat to one of the passengers to pass the Chinese borders and he has hidden under our luggages. Probably he had no entry visa, but I was thinking why we had to experience such a stress although we had a legal visa. Tespa …

From Ereen, closest Chinese town to the borders –very freshly planned with huge roads, bike lanes, pavements, roundabouts and only 2,5 million population, a sim city template (15 years old)-, our only solution was a sleeper bus that we were told it takes at least 15 hours to Beijing. No seats, just beds, Chinese size though. 1.50 * 0,50, without exaggeration. And imagine us with our “small” bags on us (all valuables, books and laptop), as we were scared to leave them so many hours with the backpacks in the port-baggage, and above all we had a huge a plastic bag (with some food, candies and alcohol) and a mattress that was on the bed. Nightmare that would last 15 hours!! We only managed to sleep for few hours when we drunk all the Genghis vodka with a Mongolian teacher of geography that he was travelling abroad for the first time. However, his knowledge of basic English and global geography were enough to keep our conversation alive for hours.
One o’ clock in the morning bus stops in a tiny parking and half of the passengers get off. We ask the driver and he replies something like “Beiza” … We thought that it cannot be possible to come 4 hours earlier than we were supposed to, and we stayed in the bus. Around 2am it reached a huge parking lot many km out of the city of Beijing. We realised on the way that we were there, by watching so many highway intersections, gardens with Olympic cycles signs, special Olympic lanes in some roads. Where do you go in a city of 15 million people, some 50km away from the bus station, at 2am and without anyone understanding English?