We arrived Guilin by plane from Xi’an. From the air we could see that the region was full of lush and green nature, small hat-shaped mountain hills, beautiful curvy rivers, and farmland. Guilin city has more or less the same size as Oslo in Norway regarding inhabitants but when we count the greater outskirts of it, it numbers nearly 5 million people. They farm lots of local fruits, spices and rice. Still the main industry is the production of medicine, textiles, electronics, food (including fish) products and rubber. Our second night in Guilin we had the pleasure of tasting freshly squeezed bamboo juice and it was surprisingly sweet and quite good. We also ate local dishes which included tiny shrimp in their shells. Guilin is famous for its grand nature, Li River, beautiful caves and rice terraces.

Guilin city center

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We arrived Xian by bullet train after 6 hours from Beijing. On our trip we could see a beautiful landscape with lots of green hills, mountains, rice fields, flowers, rural villages and urban cities. In the middle of Xi’an there is a very nice green park and riverlike moat outside the old city walls. The walls are rectangular and measures around 15 km. Since Xi’an is one of Chinas old capitals for many centuries it is understandable that they built these walls, but what a huge effort they must have laid into building them… We spent 2 hours biking in the sun on top of them – a great experience – but we were quite tired afterwards. Another attraction right outside Xi’an we were lucky to visit was the 2 500 Terracotta Warriors. Amazing!! What details and precision! Last thing we did was to watch a cultural show inside the ancient city walls – just fantastic – both regarding acting, music and colours we were astonished.

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Our kids at the Great Wall of China

What a wonderful and contrastful city Beijing is! We were lucky enough to stay at a hotel nearby The Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square (den himmelske freds plass). TheTemple of Heaven was also quite nearby so the only place we had to travel for a while by car to see was to The Great Wall of China. Our visits to the different attractions will stay in our memories forever!!! We were impressed by the sizes, the colours, the different architectural styles, the gardens and the immense work behind all of them…

The Forbidden City

The Temple of Heaven

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In the middle of Seoul city center

The past few days have been quite exciting. Weve learned how to eat with chopsticks, become efficient at buying tickets at the subway and understanding how it works… Even if there is a lot of information in korean language! In the subway nearly all the people were busy on their cellphones and rarely looked up. Another thing we discovered was that the people driving motorbikes often did it in the walk and cycle paths… We got really scared sometimes as we did not notice the bikers until they were right behind us. We also have experienced to go to a water world where almost everybody wore a life-west. No Wonder! The wave in the wave pool looked more like a tsunami!!! Continue reading →

Busan Cinema Center

Busan is a city with around 3.4 million people and the beach in Haeundae is South Korea’s “Fort Lauderdale”. At the moment it is some degrees too hot (around 35 degrees celsius) and has a busy night life. Haeundae beach is a white sandy one and is 2 km long and is well suited for relaxing and sunbathing. If you want to take a swim the sea is pleasantly warm. The city has a beautiful skyline and most buildings are quite tall making space for the city’s inhabitants. Other sites we’ve visited are Sea Life Busan Aquarium, Busan Lotte Shopping Mall, Busan Cinema Center and Beomeosa temple. All four sites were great fun.

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The whole family in front of The A-bomb Dome in Hiroshima

We just had to see and experience Hiroshima before leaving Japan. The city has over 1,2 million inhabitants.The Peace Memorial Museum is a must. Another great site is The Hiroshima Palace. We visited both sites and will go to visit The Hiroshima Contemporary Art Museum before leaving for Busan in South Korea in two days. Continue reading →

The golden temple in Kyoto

I have to admit I thought Kyoto would be a little less exciting than Tokyo… I was wrooooong! In this city one can explore plenty of historical, cultural and world heritage sites like gardens, forests, temples, lakes and shrines.The shopping district is great fun to explore as well. The pictures will tell it all… I just looooove Kyoto!!! Continue reading →

Tokyo

What a city! We are out of words. How is it possible to fit nearly 14 million people in this city and still leave it this clean?! Beats me! Whoever planned the city’s infrastructure must have been a genius to be able to make this work in such a great manner. On saturday night we went out walking, and the city was so calm and quiet. The next few days we went out to see the electric center, Sun City, the Zoo, the Imperial Palace gardens, and Ginza. Continue reading →

Gloria made our stay in Johannesburg very nice. Thank you sooo much – miss you already!

On the evening of the 28th of July we left Johannesburg to go to Tokyo in Japan. We had a loooong journey in front of us. We spent altogether 18 hours in the air, only changing planes in Doha, Qatar. Arriving Tokyo was a breathtaking experience. As we arrived late in the evening, we watched the city grow bigger and bigger under the plane until we landed. The city looked like a billion stars… The following days we were about to discover a beautiful, diverse, clean, funny, well organized, low crime, interesting and amazing city with polite, helpful and nice people. Among many other things, we saw Supermario and his friends drive peacefully through the center of Tokyo one saturday morning. We all just loved the city from day one. 🙂 Continue reading →