The Travels of Päivi and Santeri

After living 2 months in Hong Kong we like it more than in the beginning. We'll be returning to Hong Kong countryside some day, not the city center.

Chinese anarchist sounds like something that can not exist, but here is a photograph of one as a proof. Here is a funny photo we took of a Chinese anarchist.

Warm Feet and Happy Feet. This is how Päivi's feet survived the harsh winter in Hong Kong. The winter in Hong Kong was very cold thanks to climate change. Here is a photo about how Päivi's feet survived. It's pretty cold. Hope this photo will warm you up a bit.

Travelling around China by train is fast. You can cross the country in less than two days.

Our first Chinese hospitality exchange experience took us to Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province. It is not easy to find Chinese people among hosts and so we were very grateful to Lee and her roommate Barbara. They welcomed us wholeheartedly and took us to their family. Lee came to meet us at the train station when we arrived. That was actually the first time in one and a half years that somebody did so. Imagine how great it feels when you arrive tired from a 20-hour train trip and somebody is greeting you happily like an old, long awaited friend. These things we have really grown to appreciate when travelling a long time in countries where most of the time we don’t know anyone.

Nanjing has a surprisingly lively expat community considering that more internationally appealing Shanghai is just a few hours’ away. But Nanjing has a few advantages: living is cheaper and people are more patient with foreigners. The one and only reason why we stopped in Nanjing was doing hospitality exchange. People don’t usually come to the city that much for tourism as for a longer stay, for example to learn Chinese or to teach English. All of our hosts and other hospitality exchange people we met were teachers. That seems to be, actually, de facto for foreigners everywhere in China. Somehow expatriates are always polarised by the purpose of their stay. For example in Thailand it was sex tourism .

Global Nomads Päivi & Santeri celebrating their 3rd wedding anniversary on the road in China.

Travelling to Tibet by the new Qinghai-Tibet railway was awesome and easy. No notorious travel permits were needed. Tibet itself with its mountainous scenery and minority people reminded us of Bolivia, which we love, except that it was way more touristy. Still, at least the train trip was worthwhile.

Hohhot (Huhehaote in Chinese), is the capital of Inner Mongolia province located beyond the Great Wall in China. Many Chinese asked us why we were going there. According to them, there is nothing and the remote province is populated by "barbarians". Inner Mongolians call themselves Mongolians just like Outer Mongolians . Hohhot proved to be an interesting blend of modern China and Mongolian culture. You can feel the difference right away when you get out of the megalomaniac train station. Nearby streets are full of little eateries where people sit outside. In September the weather was already a bit chilly and people were keeping themselves warm by the fires, wearing jackets and wollen pullovers.

Ulaanbaatar’s city centre is Soviet-style. One part filled with dilapidated apartment buildings and the other with gers (or yurt, a kind of tent). After living seven months in a hotel in Cambodia and six months in Thailand , we thought it would be great to try something else for a while: hospitality exchange and Mongolia.