A students life..

onsdag, juli 04, 2007

Back in Norway..

Then I'm back in Norway again, and since I'm home right now, I can finally start to write in english (I was writing in norwegian before because of my parents).

Well, I have to say it's really nice to be back again, and it's AMAZING to not live in my backpack. First thing I did when I got back home, was to through all my stuff out of my backpack. Lovely.

Before I got on the bus from Bergen to Sandane, I had some really nice days staying with Selda. I was going to stay in Bergen for some days looking for an appartment, and it was also a nice opportunity to catch up with some people. I also did a lot of shopping since a lot of my clothes are on the way from Hong Kong right now. And it was, hmm.. what can I say, AWSOME to go into a shoeshop and finding shoes in my size!!!!! Also not having the people in the store yelling after you "we have big sizes maaaam"!! I can also report that I eventually found a room. For those interested (and know where it is), the street is Herman Foss gate. That means 3 min(top) walking to my department. Superb.

BUT, the most important thing: The last two weeks in Asia, which I spent in Vietnam. I have already told about Hanoi, a city which is extremely noisy. That means, I will start talking about Sapa.
This is why I'm not that fond of Hanoi, there are so damn many motorbikes!!

Sapa lies in northwest of Vietnam, and it is beautiful! I really liked it there. We arrived there the morning of.. ehm.. well, the date is not important. But we arrived in the morning of some day. We got a nice breakfast (the 2nd of the day, first one was outside the trainstation, from where we had to take a minibus to Sapa that took about 1.5 hours or something like that) before we got a room at the hotel. It was the most fancy hotelroom I had stayed in up to that point on our trip, so I was satiesfied.
View near the hotel

After some sleep and showers, it was time to visit a small village nearby, the Cat Cat village. It was a lot of downwards(which we were so lucky to walk up again afterwards), and we saw some cool local people, including these charming little kids:

The rest of the day we spent walking around in Sapa, rounding it up eating first at a market, and then dessert at the hotel. The dinner was great! Pigs getting roasted whole on the grill, some really good-tasting spears(? sticks with meat on), and some other stuff.
At the table next to us there were a bunch of vietnamese people. One of them came over and offered us some brown liquid stuff. We are polite people, so off course we accepted! We had a few toasts with them(ok, I admit, I had just one shot), and that was some pretty heavy shit!! We learned afterwards that they call it medicine.. Well, it does its work!! The table next to us got quite loud awfully soon..
Our vietnamese friend (and a german guy we got to know)

Next day, we got up around 8 and then breakfast. After this the fun started. First we drove a car for some time before it was time for us to walk. It was raining LIKE HELL, and the idea was for us to walk in the riceterrasses(or more between them), and because of the rain, it got muddy, wet, slippery and with this, extreme amount of fun :D After you got used to being wet, and after you stopped caring about your shoes being all muddy and wet, it was amazing. I think I was walking most of the time with a big smile on my face, going up and down all these muddy hills.

The view from our lunchplace.. N I C E

Our guide(16 year old, name Ke) and Michael

Eventually we came to our homestay. It had now stopped raining, so we changed before heading to a waterfall to take a swim. It was cold(the river came from the mountains), but very nice. And it made the dinner afterwards even better.
Another cute kid..

The next morning we walked to a small village nearby before heading back to the mainroad and our ride back to Sapa. Here we took a shower(best feeling in the world, showering off all the mudd and sweat) before taking the minibus to the train, which took us to Hanoi again.

Early next morning (4.30am) we arrived in Hanoi and were now trying to find the train to Haiphong. We knew that the trainstation for this train was nearby, so when all the "nice" taxidrivers and motorcycledrivers tried to tell us that the trains leaving for this city was on the other side of Hanoi, we knew they were lying to us(of course Hanoi needs 3 trainstations just to confuse). We managed to find the right one in the end, and 6am we left happily from Hanoi to Haiphong. From Haiphong we took a boat to Cat Ba Island, and this was the place I stayed the last week in Asia.

Annick, Michael and myself soon after arrival, arranged a boat for us and the norwegians, who planned to come to the island the next day. We left early next morning, an hour after the others arrived, and had two relaxing and sunny days on the boat! We didn't do much, just sunbathing, a bit of swimming, cave-exploring and some snorkeling.
Our boat... Really nice!
Michael is enjoying the water..










1,2,3 JUMP!!!!!

There wasn't much room to sleep indoor on the boat, so me, Annick and Michael decided to sleep outside on the deck. If it hadn't been for all the damn flies, this would have been a great choice, but as I said, those damn flies.. I didn't get much sleep that night, the flies just wouldn't let me do that, they really wanted to crawl on me(at least the little devils didn't sting me, like they did with some of the others), and especially around my ears. And when they finally stopped doing that, the sun came up and soon it got too hot to sleep. Since the others that slept inside got the flies as well, I shouldn't complain about it, especially since we got all the stars!! WOW. There wasn't a cloud in sight, just stars, stars, STARS! Can't think of anything more romantic, I was just in lack of the right guy there with me.

We spent the rest of the week on the beach, getting some tan and finally relaxing a bit. Dan and Cristin joined us, and along with them an irish dude and a swedish guy. We also lost Annick, and some days later Michael (I really HATE people leaving), and we had a day on motorbikes(cool, cool COOL), but that was pretty much it!
Charming as always :P
Some played football in the heat..

Cool!!

And they think the same:D

Oh, I almost forgot, I had some hours on the beach alone(the last day), and started looking more closely on my camera. I figured out I had a selftimer, so I started experimenting a bit. When Andreas and Sigrid came down some minutes later, I was sitting on my beachbed with a HUGE smile on my face. I was so happy I had found that function! They commented that I looked insane, sitting there all by myself, with the beach all to myself(vietnamese people don't go to the beach between 11 and 16,4pm in matt-time, because the stupid people don't want to get tanned) and smiling like hell. But here is one of the pictures I took:

So, then it was time for traveling home again. First part of the trip(after some more goodbyes) was from the island to Hanoi, and then from Hanoi to Bangkok by plane(now I was, for the first time on the trip, traveling alone). I stayed the night in Bangkok in a really nice guesthouse, and the next day I took another plane, this time to Macau. From Macau I took the boat to Hong Kong, where I met up with Jenny, Sigrid, Bjarte and Andreas again.

Next day it was time for massive shopping. Andreas and Bjarte had left early that morning, so it was me, Jenny and Sigrid left. It was the last day in Hong Kong, and we were all a bit nostallgic(not sure I can use that word here, but can't come up with anything better at the moment, I need sleep) for that reason. It was a saturday, so there were A LOT of people outside at this point. Awfully many sometimes.

Waiting for the bus, last time in Hong Kong..

After this shoppingday, it was time for flying HongKong-Munich-Copenhagen-Bergen. It was actually not that bad this time. We had seats together all the time, and on the flight from Hong Kong to Munich, we got 6-7 hours of sleep, believe it or not!
And then, on sunday, 1400 local time, we finally landed in Bergen. Even though people tell me it was warm, it felt like I was going out into a snowstorm(yes, I might exagerate a tiny bit right now, but just a tiny:P), but the air itself was lovely and extremely not dry! Oh, how I love the air here. And when people here tell me that it is humid outside, I often take myself wondering what they are talking about. After experiencing the Hong Kong air, nothing is humid.

Well, now I at least have written a bit about my last part of the trip. And soon there will be more, from my sommer in Norway. Hurra..