Trip to Kunming/Dali

Just got back from my trip to Kunming, visiting my old fellow AIESECer Sven who is studying Mandarin there. My flight out on Thursday was as early as 8 am, so I would have gotten up around 6 am. WOULD HAVE! But I stayed up all night to watch the Champions League final with the AIESEC interns Frank and Hilton. Hence, I was dead tired already when I got to Kunming :).
It was great to see Sven again after more than a year. Kunming is a pretty chilled out city, nothing compared to the hectic pace in Hong Kong. And they have a coffee culture, too! To get started, Sven took me to a laid back restaurant. Food was so cheap and sooooo good. In the late afternoon we hopped on a coach for a 4 hour ride to Dali where we were gonna spend the next two days. It's popular with foreign and Chinese tourist as it offers both recreational activities and historical sites. The town lies between the Er Lake and the Cang Shan mountain range whose highest summit reaches over 4000 m above sea level. The following day, after a good coffee in one of the many cafés, we headed up the slope aiming at the mountain guest house Higherland Inn from with the summit is only 5 hours away. Pretty nice place and very friendly hosts. If you ever get the chance to go to Dali, check it out. The hike took us about 2 hours through a thick pine forest, a paradise for squirrels (there were heaps).
We got up really early the next morning to see the sun rising from behind the opposite mountain range with the Er Lake in the foreground - just pretty (but the battery of my camera just died then, *anger*). After breakfast we went on a two hours' walk to a large waterfall which washed out seven pools called the Seven Dragon Pools. The water was freezing cold. But as tough as we were (!) we didn't shrug a shoulder and went for a dip *brrrr*.
The bus ride from Dali back to Kunming on Saturday night took 2.5 hours longer than scheduled (!). A story very worth telling. We had a mentally disturbed woman in our bus and after the pee break she just disappeared leaving all her belongings on the bus. After an hour of seemingly fruitless discussions (without really looking for her), the bus was cleared to continue the journey. After a couple of minutes later, the driver pulled over again because that woman was walking crazily along the highway, starting to run whenever the coach got closer to her. The bus then followed her at a walking pace for quite a while (we got nuts) because nobody wanted to run the risk of scarring her to the open highway and have her run over. Finally the police arrived and managed to stop her. She screamed like crazy (well, she was). Somehow they managed to make her shut up (?). After another hour of discussions, we finally went on. The police and one of the drivers were taking care of her. For the full, uncensored account, approach me anytime :). Though we got back to Kunming way later than planned, Sven took me to a bar where lots of foreigners hang out. Pretty weird crowd!
Before leaving Kunming today afternoon, I just had to have another coffee. Delicious (compared to the brown liquid they serve in HK)!

Catch-up Wrap-up I

Hey folks, I've been pretty slack with my blog lately. So I have to do some catching-up.

Week 9 - 15 April
On Saturday I went to Shenzhen with a colleague from work. It's the first Mainland city across the border and a shopping paradise, well at least in terms of prices and range of stuff you can buy. The shopping experience is only mildly pleasant. Had a headache afterwards.
At night, Jeff and I went to FINDS for a house party, yeah Hed Kandi (Ministry of Sound) was in town. Jeff, me and especially Philipp had been looking forward to it for weeks. Philipp, for SOME (ever changing) reason, pulled out ;). Had been the craziest night so far. A German girl kept on offering Moët Chandon (bought with daddy's credit card). As polite as we were, we never refused :).

Week 16 - 22 April
On Friday was the grand opening of the Mercedes-Benz Performance Studio in posh Repulse Bay, the dedicated outlet for AMG models. Hence, I had quite a lot of work that week. For instance, on Wednesday I had to wait in Repulse Bay for the cleaning company to tidy up the showroom after the big renovation. They finished after midnight instead at 22.00, so I had a long chilling evening in RB.
The opening event as such was pretty cool. An AMG mechanic from Affalterbach (D) was flown in. He assembled a 12V bi-turbo engine live. Quite impressive. Most of the time I was standing next to one of our classic cars, the original 450 SLC which won the South American rally in 1978, in case anyone had a question about the car. Luckily enough, nobody came up to me coz I had no idea about that car, eigher :). After the event, there was plenty of food and champagne left. Never waste food and drinks, right? ;)
On Saturday, I met the AIESEC trainees in HK for the first time. We had a farewell dinner for a Dutch trainee first and then I introduced them to the PI club ;).

Week 23 - 29 April
On Friday, there was an afterwork cocktail gathering co-organized by the Swiss and the Swedish Chamber of Commerce :). Well, the Swiss were highly outnumbered, 4 Swiss vs. the rest of the bar full of Swedes. So, more Swedes for everybody :). After a couple of drinks (happy hour), I parted from the big Swiss delegation and went on to Goccia with some of the sweet Swedes. Goccia, a fake Italian bar where they also cool down red wine to 4° (!), was apparently the place where the HK Swedes hang out (Good to know!). After some more drinks, we decided to move on to Drop. I had never managed to get into that place, I always had to put up with some lame excuses not to let me in. But guess what! Have a cute blond girl right next to you and they lay out a red carpet for you (only metaphorically, because literally there is already one, and most probably more for the blond girl than for me). Anyhow, the place wayyyyy doesn't justify the fuss they make at the entrance. As for the Swedes (I don't wanna generalize as I'm interculturally sensitive after all), it seems that they are quite sociable at the kick-off stage, but there is no follow-up, I mean just judging from my first experience. Hence, another pile of business cards for the dumpster and phone numbers that use up storage space of your mobile. Anyhow...
On Saturday, beaching for the first time. But the water was still too cold for me. So no dipping for me that time. In the evening, I went out with Jeff, the AIESEC trainees Hilton and Faisal, and Mani, a local girl hanging out with the AIESECers. First we went to Dragon-I, a fancy place for bes and wanna-bes or wanna-be-seen-by-the bes, whatever. Paid 150 bucks for the most boring place ever. At least one highlight, we saw Jackie Chan's son, yay. We then went on to the PI (again, as far as I can remember), but it was dead. So we moved on to Wanchai and to good old From Dusk till Down, never a disappointment.
On Sunday, I was surprised to receive a SMS from Katrin, an AIESEC St. Gallen alumni. She did two internships in HK and couldn't get enough of this city. I had dinner with her and some more AIESEC trainees I had not met before. Cool night, but incredibly hot Indian food (It took me the whole next day to recover). Katrin and I went on for a drink in the fancy Aqua Rome where you can sip at your well-priced drink and enjoy the harbour view.

Beijing, here I come!

Easter holiday and I got five days off. I took that opportunity to visit my good old mate Chris from university who is doing an internship in Beijing right now. One remark before I start me recount: When I told my colleagues at work that I was going to Beijing for Easter holiday I got reactions from shaking of the head to "what the hell are you going to Beijing for? There's nothing to see, it's just a waste of time and money and it's full of mainlanders, I can't stand them". Apparently, Hong Kong Chinese tend to dislike the mainlanders, as they call them. It goes so far as statements like: "They are a disgrace to my race". Sociologically interesting and kinda sad at the same time.
Anyhow, I haven't seen my friend Chris for ages and it was great to catch up and reminisce. He made to the effort of planning my stay to the very detail. Cheers on you, mate! I didn't have to care about anything. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to stick to his schedule coz I spend to much time on shopping. Everything was soooo cheap there that I spent more than I had ever before. Among others (lots), I got myself two taylor-made suits and a cashmere coat, really stylish! But of course I did do some sightseeing. I saw the Forbidden City, Tiannamen Square, the Temple of Heaven, but the best of all was the Great Wall. We hired a bus for a whole day to drive to Simatai, which is about a 2.5 hours' drive outside of Beijing City. It was really worth it because there were hardly any other tourists on the wall. Funny enough, I met Marco and Matell, two interns from Hong Kong.
Some notes on Beijing: There is much more space than in Hong Kong, so I really appreciated not being pushed around all the time. What's more, the flats are way, way bigger than those in Hong Kong. I was really jealous of Chris' apartment. His room is like 5 times as big as mine, no kidding. However, pollution was worse and the air was really dry as opposed to the humidity in Hong Kong. So instead of dehumidifiers they would have humidifiers in their flats.
I was already surprised by the fact that many people in HK don't speak a word of English, but in Beijing English is as useless as any other language. I could make myself understood with my lousy Mandarin, hooray, good on me. But the thing is, I wouldn't understand their responses :). But people really appreciated my poor attempts. Anyone going to the Olympic games next year? You'd better start studying Mandarin now!

Rugby Sevens, yeah

Already during the week, you could notice that something special is going on in Hong Kong because the streets were (even) more crowded than usually, particularly in Lan Kwai Fong. And many wore shirts with strange colours, mostly strips and squares. We were looking forward to this for weeks, Hong Kong Sevens 2007 was coming up (sponsored by Credit Suisse, by the way), three days of stout sweaty guys looking for an egg (Easter is drawing near). We didn't have a clue about rugby, but we knew it would be the biggest party in town. As there was no way we could have get on hold of officially sold tickets, we decided to take our chances and rely on the flourishing black market.
But, let me put everything in chronological order. On Friday, we went partying (of course). We started off at FINDS, where we usually get free drinks as the management is Swiss :). Then Gigi managed to get us into one of the fancy clubs in Hong Kong, club 9. But first of all, she told me to go home and change my shoes as I was wearing sneakers. She convinced me that this club is really worth the hassle so I went home blabla just to find out in the end that EVERYONE was wearing sneakers in there apart from me. Anyhow, the club was indeed not bad. Good music, nice intereur and stuff. Even so, we decided to move on to From Dusk Till Dawn in Wan Chai. Like in Insomnia in Lan Kwai Fong there was a Filipino band playing there and they just rocked the house. The grand finale of the night was breakfast at the Flying Pan again.

We had actually planned to get to the stadium quite early, but after the night out there was no way we could have done that. I'm still proud of us that we made it to the stadium by 1pm. Cheers to the black market, we got in just in time to see one my favourite team, the All Blacks (New Zealand), play. As it was sevens rugby, that is, only seven players per team, playing for 2 x 7 minutes, we saw all teams, some of them even twice. The All Blacks qualified for the cup finals on Sunday, so I had to support "my team". However, it was way harder to find tickets at a reasonable price on Sunday. The first offer I got was 1500 HKD! Around the stadium the prices hovered around an "equilibrium price" of 500 honkies. Those black market dudes had a cartell agreement, I'm more than sure. I was at the point of giving up when I family guy with his to kids was leaving the premise, and I got my got my ticket for as little as 50 honkies :). The Sunday games were of course much better because the good teams would play against each other, there were more fans and the atmosphere was just great. The All Blacks beat England in the quarter finals but got defeated by Fiji in the semi-finals :( As a footnote, the cup was then won by Samoa. On the way home, Philipp suggested having "one drink":) We had another good night at From Dusk Till Dawn. The best weekend so far. (Apologies if I bored you with the rugby stuff)

Posh Week

On Tuesday, I met my boss and one of my work mates - who happened to be on a roadshow through Asia - for a drink at fancy Ritz Carlton. I got there a bit too early and thus was sitting on my own in the lobby and really felt out of place. One lady cast her you-do-not-belong-here-look at me. I was therefore glad when my colleagues arrived and we had a really good time. It was sort of strange to see familiar faces in a completely unfamiliar environment. When I was about the leave the hotel and fancily dressed woman came out of the elevator. Outside the hotel, she all of a sudden asked me whether I wanted to share a cab with her. I thought, how stingy can she be: staying at the Ritz Carlton but not ready to pay for a cab ride on her own. Also a bit short of cash, I then asked her where she wanted to go. And she goes like "Dunno, just some bar". And I go "Well, I have to go to Sheung Wan (which is rather close to Ritz Carlton)". She seemed surprised, "Sheung Wan? What were you doing at Ritz Carlton then?" I answered, "Well, had a drink" and was about to ask her what she was doing at the Ritz when it dawned on me... Another lesson learned: Not everybody who comes out of the Ritz Carlton really stays there.
On Thursday night, Jeff, Philipp and myself went out for dinner. We decided to check out a sushi place in Central. Philipp, as sensible as he is, asked for the menu at the door to check the prices first. Then they sent like the most gorgeous girl in Hong Kong over to the door, and somehow the prices didn't matter anymore :) What's more, we decided that we would come to this restaurant every Thursday. We kinda had second thoughts after we were presented the bill... (and the girl had ended her shift long ago).
Japanese food again on Friday, this time in a restaurant inside the Grand Hyatt Hotel (no worries, I didnt rob a bank, just got invited). The highlights were king prawns coated with little shrimps and second to nothing... the kobe beef. Never have I eaten such goooooooood meat. At night, Jeff, a colleague of his, Philipp and me went to Tribeca. Depending on how the guy at the cash box liked our faces we paid between 140 and 200 honkies to get in, but then got an open bar in exchange. Of course we wanted to get our money's worth... ;) To tame our boozy stomachs, we had a large breakfast at the Flying Pan. On Saturday night, we randomly met German interns. One of them, Christian, did his Bachelor's degree in St. Gallen as well. With them was a cheeky local girl called Gigi. After lots of waiting (it seemed like ages), we decided to part regardless (!). Looking for a nice bar, we ended up at the Insomnia bar, where a Filipino live band plays every night. And they were really, really good. We left early regardless; our bodies were craving for sleep.

Expensive and crazy weekend!

On Saturday, Ruth showed me some more shopping places (yeah, I blame it all on you, Ruth), first the Landmark building with all the exclusive brands such as Louis Vitton and the rest of the posh stuff, bit over my budget. She then took me to Stanley at the very south of HK island. There was a nice market. And yeah, the Chinese are really good at faking stuff, good on ya fellas. On Sunday, I then went shopping on my own. First I went to Tsim Sha Tsui, to have a suit taylored. It's really cheap here. You wouldn't get a decent suit from the rack for that money in Switzerland. After that, I went on to the Ladies Market in Mong Kok and again the Night Market in Jordan. Not a good idea, I bought heaps of stuff, got even talked into buying a fake watch. Now, I'm the big pretender :)
Ok, that was the expensive part of the weekend, now comes the crazy one. Remember, I told you about the Hey Hey club on Thursday. Yeah, Filip, my flatmate, met a girl that night, who turned out to be a crazy stalker, no kidding. They met before I left for shopping, and she was still there, when I got back at night, and didn't want to leave... Well, I went to bed coz I had to work the next day. They would go on fighting in Cantonese and once in while she would start whining. Finally, I managed to fall asleep wearing earplugs. But all of a sudden she was standing in my room and scared the shit out of me! Apparently, she didn't get what she wanted from Filip and was now settling for less. Aaaahhh, get the hell out of my room crazy b.....unny. She went on whining to Filip for another while, and finally, finally, we convinced her (only verbally, folks) to leave. Then I had an earnest word with Filip. Why the hell couldn't he just kick her out? What was the problem? He then revealed that she was from a rich and powerful family and that she had threatened him. Whaaaat?! Don't wanna get slaughtered by the triads, man! Well, we then both went to bed, but I didn't sleep much. Funny enough, the next morning, when I left for work, there were to old guys peering at our building with binoculars. Scary, aye?! But probally only two old voyeurs. I hope!

Intensive week

On Monday, I started my internship with Mercedes-Benz Hong Kong. The office is located in Central Plaza, an amazing building. I work on the 59th and it has more than 70 floors. So to handle all the people they are several lifts serving only a certain range of the floors. For instance, I have to take a transfer lift first that shoots me straight up to the 46th from where another lift takes me the the 59th floor. Crazy, aye? My first working day was pretty easy. As nobody had time to do a proper introduction, I tried to get acquainted to the department's business reading older presentations. Tuesday, however, was already the first day I had to work late and stayed in the office till 9pm. The superior of our boss was coming from Germany to get to know the Hong Kong office. So everybody had fire in his/her... And I could contribute with something I'm pretty good at: fine tuning Powerpoint slides :). In the evening, Ruth (a uni mate from Switzerland, who is doing an internship in HK as well) took my to the Night Market introduced me to the HK shopping culture.
On Wednesday evening, I joined in for an afterwork drink with the "young talents" of the Swiss Chamber of Commerce at the FINDS bar. It turned out that the general manager and the marketing officer were Swiss. They kept offering us free drinks and as polite as we were, we kindly accepted. What's more, they invited us for the next evening. That Thursday night was really crazy. First, we had so many free shots at FINDS that any reasonable thinking was put out. It was then when we decided to move on to the renown Hey Hey Club and were even prepared to pay 160 Honkies entry (stupid!). We stayed way too long which left it marks on the following day...!