Author: Maren Hanetho

As we all know the the world is on fire, and if one wants to travel, you just have to go with whats avalible. Trond booked tickets 3 months ago with the travel agency in China for railway tickets from Bejing to Ulan Bator. It was a lot of emails and the language barrier was significant. But with a little trust and patience. It all worked out. And it was quiet the experience. We got to see a lot of both China and Mongolia we woulden’t have seen otherwise.

Continue reading “The closest thing available to the Trans-Mongolian railway”

Jinshanling

The great wall is a series of fortifications in China. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient chinese state and Imperial China as protection. The first walls date to the 7th century BC, these were joined together in the Qin dynasty. Successive dynasties expanded the wall, the best-known sections were built by the Ming dinasty (1368–1644). We did som googeling and decided we wished to visit the part of the wall you can acsess from Jinshanling. Its a part of the wall that haven’t been restored, but still safe to walk. It was challenging in parts, but so worth it. You could feel history under your feet and the view was breathtaking. Its also very few tourists here. So you could enjoy the great walls magic undisturbed. And the great wall of China definitely has a magic thats hard to convey into words. One simply has to exeperience it.

We booked an unguided tour that picked us up at our hotel. They had bookes tickets for us and explained where to go. The bus drove us to the main office at Jinshanling.

Continue reading “The great wall of China”

with guide

The forbidden city build from 1406 – 1420.

After going through a lot of checkpoints we came to a massive queue. And our guide told us its like this every day. Of course everybody wants to go to the forbidden city.

Continue reading “The forbidden city”

While the South Korean people have a very spesifc exprience linked to the Hanbok rental. The Chinese are more limitless. You can rent you Hanfu for 24 hours and do whatever you like. Which makes it a collective experince and fun for all of us.

We went to visit the art zone, and it was a super cozy, highly creative and fun. We spent hours here. And we could have stayed a couple of days in these creative spaces without sering everything. Among cool museums, there were small atliers and shops. We found a DIY atelier, were you could buy the supplies and rent a small workbench and tools. There were selfdriving snacktruks and old industrial buildings turned into artspaces.

We found small cafés with amming food and even a prize winning brewery.

It was a bit of a metro ride to get here but we are super peoud of our metro skills.

Hear me out. I know Lego is a Danish brand. And I been to Legoland several times, but this store was FUN. Cool exibit pieces, a massive colletion and a huge selecton of Lego by the wheight. You could make your own figures. And all at a price cheaper than in Denmark and original. So if you love Lego like I do, its well worh a visit. Even though it feels a bit like cheating. Travel half way around the world to see Lego….you know what I mean. But next stop is a hip Chinese art district, so I figured I had 30 minutes to spare. I made myself a Lego man, and bought 2 premade just bcause they were super fun and I have never seen so much accessorizes for the Legowomen/man.

Last night as we were walking to our hotel we noticed a huge line and was very curious. It was a small hole in the wall with cold drinks and ice cream. Everybody walked away the same green ice cream. Today as we were walking by, there was just a few people in line. So Maren decided to give it a try. You could chose green tea or jasmine. I chose Jasmine, it it was super light, melting on your tounge, like a cross between slush and soft ice. It was super good and only cost 15 kr. I will defenetly go back and taste green tea.

Saturday is shoppingday! We first went to the Silk market which turned out to be more like a fancy depatment store. If you want the famous brands more reasonbly priced this is the place to be. We were more in the mood for a marked. So after looking around here moved on to the Pearl marked.

Pearl Marked was a super fun and intense marked. With everything from Electronics to clothes. We have done a little reaserch and haggeling is expected. And that you can get things at 70% under the asking price. We got a lot of presents here and Trond is a master at haggeling. The experience was so intense so we have no pictures from inside the store. But it was super fun and if you get the chance, derenetly give it a try. The locals think its fun when you haggel with them and all of them was intrested in communicating even if they didn’t know english. We used googel traselate a lot. We had to take a break after some serious shopping, super happy with the experience and our loot. We were also planning how to get our loot to Norway.

We feel very assimilated now, and Maren was super proud when one of the staff asked if she was part chinese.