Sweden - Round One

Hej hej! Our entry into Sweden was across the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe, the Oresund Bridge. It's actually a combined tunnel and bridge but at just over 7.8km, it's certainly in the big bridge category. We brought as much alcohol over as we thought we could get away with (and carry), since Denmark has way cheaper booze (still not cheap though). Turns out there was nothing to worry about. Not only did we not get checked for booze, we didn't even get passports checked, since we're now in the EU.

It's great to be back in my country of birth, especially as that means we've got hookups galore here! First few days were spent in Malmö, checking out the local sights and catching up with old friends. Then we headed over to Brantevik, on the east coast of the south of Sweden to see some more family friends. This is a very small village, where a lot of people have their summer houses, so it was a nice place to relax. On the way there we stopped off at a beach, the southernmost point of Sweden (words can't even describe the excitement there!) and a couple of incredible car dealerships (for all you car nuts out there, this included a Porsche 959, a McLaren SLR and several other rare and expensive beauties).

Sweden, and Scandinavia in general so far, has a really nice vibe. We've met quite a few locals and had a couple of good nights out (booze prices severely limit this part of the travel experience!). Everyone is friendly, relaxed and helpful. And they're all good looking!

There are a few things on my to do list for Sweden and we've made a start on getting through them. We've had some delicious gravlax (there's nothing quite like Swedish salmon), falukorv (a tasty sausage) and good, strong Swedish coffee. A few days ago we visited Ikea! That place is brilliant, nice, clean Swedish design and everything's cheap (well for here anyway). Still got a few things to tick off the list but we'll be back here for a few weeks after a stint in Norway.

Old Zealand

Copenhagen

We always thought Denmark would just be a stop-over point for bigger and better things in Scandinavia but it turned out to be a bit of a gem! Everyone there is pretty relaxed, the emphasis on life in these parts seems to be on living, not working which is kinda nice. Our hostel was next to a lake near the city centre, which is mainly pedestrian only streets, so was a perfect place to just wander round and look at stuff. While we where there the weather really turned it on, making it a nice wee stop-over. Incidently, Copenhagen is on an island called Zealand, yet the resembalance in shape or character to New Zealand eluded us!

Carlsberg Brewery

This was a bit of a hike from where we were staying but the weather was so nice we walked it anyway. En-route we had to pass through the red light district which consists predominantly of tattoo parlours and sex-shops of various persuasion with some, uh, interesting window displays. We were really going to the brewery to score some cheap beer but it was a pretty interesting place too! They had a mint beer bottle collection (13,000+) of beers from round the world and had restored heaps of the old steam powered machines they used to use to make the beer. There's a lot of history behind the company, I wont go into it but look it up if you are bored, is worth a read. And of course at the end of the tour we got to sample some of the beer...

Stop drinking all our beer New Zealanders!!!

Christianhaven and Christiania Freetown

Christianhaven is an area of Copenhagen which is kinda on an island in the harbour. It's pretty funky and in the middle is a church on which you can climb right to the top point of the roof and look out over the city, cool. At the edge of Christianhaven is Christiania Freetown. Christiania was formed in the 70s by a bunch of hippies as an independent society. It's self governed and has it's own flag, but not quite an independent state. The place is famous because you used to be able to buy drugs openly and legally on the street there, but the Danish government has since cracked down on this. The place is pretty much a hippie commune, street stalls with rasta hats and designer bongs, but was pretty cool to walk around, quite relaxed as you can probably imagine, even the dogs there looked stoned! Unfortunately you cant take any photos inside so we cant show you what it looked like.


Worlds Best Small-to-Medium-Sized Fountain

We were walking down to the harbour to look at this big boat that we'd spotted from the aforementioned church tower. The main attraction down here is the Little Mermaid, which Copenhagen is apparently famous for. It was so shit, it was just a statue on a rock by the ocean, it's even less impressive than that stupid cone in the square back home! But near there we found this Mac Daddy fountain which wasnt mentioned in any of the tourist material but was awesome! The pictures dont quite do it justice but the way they've desigined it makes the chariot look like it's moving. We went back the next day to see it again as it was so cool!

Warm Beer Anyone?

Actually the beer isn't warm here. It certainly is expensive though! Instead of getting change from NZ$10 for a big night out, like in China, you're lucky to get change from that for one beer at a pub! Probably a good thing for our livers though. And having said that, we still managed to have a few good nights out without completely blowing the budget, the biggest of which started at a cheap byo curry place.



It's been a while since I've been to the land of pubs, punks and Poms. Quite nice to be back though I must say. Although, thanks to the state of the world nowadays, it was a solid four hours between touching down and actually passing through customs. On this particular day it was a bomb threat causing one of the terminals to be shut down. Unfortunately, this is by no means rare either. All around the UK, and London in particular, terrorist scares cause constant disruption to daily life. Bit of a shame really but everybody just gets on with it.



The rolling, green countryside was a welcome sight after the lack of just that in Asia. And how strange to hear everyone speaking English! At first, I kept expecting every readable sign to not make any sense at all. It does make ordering off a menu a tad boring too, since you know exactly what you're getting!



This was probably the quickest ten days of the whole trip. As well as having all the London sights to see, there was also half of Christchurch to catch up with over here! It was great seeing so many people that we haven't seen since leaving home and several that we hadn't seen in years. Several of the lads managed to get their trips to coincide with ours too so we were able to spend a bit of quality time together, which was great. Expecting the same from the rest of you boys while we're away of course! Managed to see a lot of London with Saunders and Willsy in particular and still find plenty of time to get on the booze. We even bought walkie talkies, purely for practical reasons of course. Awesome. Thanks to the the UK Clifford contingent (Ballantines, Hays and Cowans) for putting us up too. Pretty happy that we didn't have to hand over any of those bloody expensive pounds for accommodation!


Being England we weren't expecting much weather-wise. However, the first few days were stunners, bright blue skies and decent temperatures. It went a little bit downhill after that, just to remind us where we were but, still, it's better than the weather in NZ at the mo!

Cheers Mum!

Yep got to see Mum again, maybe the first and last time for a while! Big ups to you and David for spending the last day of your holiday waiting for us in an airport and hooking us up somewhere to stay for the first night, it was awesome to see you again!

St Paul's Cathedral

Whether you believe in Jebus or not this place is mighty impressive! From the outside it's by no means a small building yet nothing overly impressive. Yet inside the main chamber (after a cheeky 9.50 pound fee) it's just amazing! I'm going to put it out there and say it was more impressive than most of the temples we saw in Asia. The artwork and detail on the walls and ceilings is extremely detailed and ornate, all the big names from the bible are there. You can go up some stairs (433 of them!) to a gallery overlooking the main chamber. It's called the whispering gallery, because you can whisper into the wall at one point and if someone is listening further along the room they can here you. Not quite so effective when the place is packed with other tourists though! From here you can climb even further and get out onto the roof where you can see pretty much all of London. After that we went down to the crypt where there were some pretty famous people such as Lord Nelson are buried.

The London Eye

Even though it's a hell of a rip off it's one of those things you have to do while in London. There's not a lot to tell really, it was pretty much what you'd expect. Queue, get on, go round, make faces and ruin the souvenir photo for everyone else in your capsule, get off. The views were good though and we managed to get up there on a corker of a day.

Le Tour de France

Among the myriad of things happening in London the weekend we were there was the Prologue of Le Tour de France (the time trial stage to determine starting order of the race). The course was in a great place, running through Hyde Park past Buckingham Palace and other relevant landmarks. We got down there early with the promise of free biking gear, but ended up being showered with crappy hats and lollies from various French sponsoring companies. We managed to stake out some good vantage points though and watched each cyclist thundering past (average speed of the winner was 54kph over 9km!). It was a stunner of a day in the sun and it was cool to be at the start of such a world renowned event. Finished off the day with a beer in Covent Gardens watching the buskers. Nice.

Other London Stuff

We made a few visits to Hyde Park, this was nice. There's a cool wee memorial to Anzac soldiers with a bit of goss on NZ, apparently rugby was first introduced to New Zealand in Nelson! Buckingham Palace, probably not as pretty as you would expect I think Kensington Palace is the show pony, but cool all the same and the surrounds are nice. Didn't see the Queen though, she must have been busy. Harrods, probably the ritziest supermarket I've ever seen, as well as every designer clothing label, rinding boot and polo stick brand you can think of. Half the fun is looking at the ridiculously expensive and luxurious cars parked out the front! We brought some pies there. Big Ben, or Medium Ben is probably more accurate. It's an impressive looking structure, just not as tall as I imagined, maybe the same as a 7-8 story building.

Well that was London at first take, we'll be back!

We Ate Dog!!

That's right folks, we ate dog. And we liked it, tasted a bit like a cross between bacon and beef actually. Since being here in Beijing we've also dined on such delights as donkey, snake, cockroach, scorpion and silk worm. We had the dog and donkey at a restaurant just down the road from our hostel and both were tasty. The rest of the interesting morsels we tried at a night market a few minutes taxi away.

The night market was quite cool, really vibrant with a lot going on. There a was a guy making edible figurines by blowing up and shaping liquid sugar blobs. Another lady was demonstrating Chinese opera, which is really not a pleasant experience. Chinese opera is not even remotely related to Italian opera, or singing for that matter. Instead they warble and screech at the top of their lungs with an ear splitting yell. At the end of the night market there was a long set of stalls and this is where you find all the strange stuff. The only thing we actually liked were the scorpions, they weren't bad at all. The silk worms, on the other hand, were absolutely disgusting, texture, taste, everything about them was horrible.

The Wall

Well you cant go to Bejing without going to the Great Wall. We fortunately met some people at our hostel who were heading out to one of the more remote sections of the wall, as you can imagine the main sections are somewhat of a mass tourist trap. The drive out took a couple of hours, made entertaining by our driver who drove in typical Chinese style: fast, dangerous and irrational. The wall was amazing, it just goes on and on and on (and on) and to think that there is about 6,400kms of the thing is pretty mind blowing, they really didnt want those Mongolians coming in! The part we walked on has been restored, but still looks very authentic. We did a 10km trek which was pretty steep in places but the views were amazing! Unfortunately the weather was a bit average and there was some mean thunder rumbling above. About halfway through the walk lightning started hitting the wall. One bolt of the stuff hit the wall a few cms from my foot. A spark came off my toe, it felt a bit like kicking an electric fence, exciting times! I was hoping for the onset of some mystical super power after an incident like this, but it's yet to reveal itself... After this the rain started coming down pretty hard which put a bit of a damper on the rest of the walk, but still definitely one of the coolest things we did in China.

Forbidden City vs. Summer Palace

As a lot of you will be aware, one of the major highlights of Beijing is the Forbidden City. Unfortunately, for the second time this trip we ended up feeling a bit disappointed. To be fair, it wasn't so much the Forbidden City itself that disappointed though. Like a lot of places in China (and especially Beijing), they are building, renovating and refurbishing everywhere. As a result, most of the place was covered in scaffolding and netting. It was also a crappy day weather-wise, with grey skies, fog and rain. The other annoyance, which is to be expected of course, were the masses of tourists as far as the eye could see. All this aside, the Forbidden City was still impressive and yet another testament to the Chinese desire to build everything as massive as possible. The huge walled area is a collection of large, open squares, decorative halls and manicured gardens. There were also some interesting collections of artifacts in the surrounding anterooms. But unfortunately it just wasn't enough...

The following day we headed out to a lesser know attraction that Beijing has to offer, the Summer Palace. To start with, the rain of the previous day had cleared the smog from the skies and during the night the clouds had all disappeared. So the sun was shining and the skies were blue as we headed out on our rented bikes. The Summer Palace is set on a large lake, with walkways and parks surrounding the water. We headed towards the palace via the west side of the lake. The views were fantastic and the whole atmosphere was quite relaxed. The actual Summer Palace sits up on a hill that looks out over the lake so we wandered up there for nice views and a short climb. In the palace there were quite a few tourists but the walk up had been much more pleasant than at the Forbidden City. This was the definite winner of the two and I'd recommend it to anyone going to Beijing.

The Silk Market

Despite the name, there wasnt a lot of silk on sale here. Instead it's a massive six story complex full of small shops selling every type of clothing available. We walked in there not intending to buy much but ended up coming away with: 2 T shirts, 2 shorts, 2 pairs of shoes and 2 pairs of flip flops between us, meaning we had to jettison some of the older clothes from our packs to make room. The fun part of these markets is the bargaining. The Chinese in their shrewdness will give you a ridiculously high starting price, usually about 5-6 times higher than they are expecting. To reach a decent price involves a certain amount of faux anguish from both sides, walking away, coming back, screaming, pretending to cry... But in the end though we got some pretty good bargains! Good times!

Other places we've visited around Beijing include Tienanmen Square, The Temple of Heaven, The Yellow River and numerous bars and restaurants (of course). Tienanmen Square is unbelievably vast and the building at its centre apparently contains Mao's actual head (although we didn't get it see it because it too was being refurbished, the building, not the head). The Temple of Heaven was nice but we were nearing our temple limit by this stage so we didn't spend too long here.

The Yellow River was crap. For a start it was brown, and the Chinese have attempted to create some sort of theme park out there which just ruins everything. There was quite a big bar street in Beijing, which was a bit dead during the week but good times come the weekend. As for the restaurants, we made sure to try the local dish, Peking Duck, a couple times and it didn't disappoint. It comes as a set, the skin is fried crispy, with the meat on another plate, then these are rolled up with cucumber and scallions in thin wraps and dipped in a soy-based sauce.

Shaolin

We just finished the blog and realised we forgot about this! En-route to Bejing we stopped at this city called Zhengzhou. We had never heard of this place before but its a city of 6 million people, on a Chinese scale this is just a "town". A few hours from here is the world famous Shaolin Temple and the Shaolin Monks. We tripped out there one day for a wee looksee. The temple grounds are really tranquil, set in amongst these really nice hills. This tranquility however is somewhat ruined by the 10,000 odd tourists who come through here each day. Most people come to see the performances by the Shaolin Monks which is very impressive. These guys are trained from the age of 4, there isnt a scrap of fat on them and they are extremely disciplined. These guys can do a back flip as easily as the rest of us can snap our fingers. The shows consisted of a ton of acrobatics, sticks and swords spinning at high speeds, kung fu and and loud yelling. Unfortunately we couldnt take any photos....

The Beards

Well the beard growing contest is over, and to be honest Im going to have to give it to Marcus for superior facial coverage. However, growing a ginger beard is just plain wrong - Marcus, you're disqualified.

The Marcus and Kev Travel Awards - China

Best Beer Category - 1. Tsingtao, 2. Hahn, 3. Baiju

Best Food Category - 1. Muslim BBQ'd Lamb, 2. Chilli Chicken, 3. Explode the Donkey Casserole (actual name!)

Most Impressive Category - 1. The Great Wall, 2. Shanghai's Architecture, 3. The view from the top of Hua Shaun

Worst Experience Category - 1. Trying to swallow a silkworm, 2. Waking up in a puddle, 3. Baiju Hangovers

Best Value Category - 1. Alcohol and Food, 2. Shoes and Clothes, 3. Trains and Buses

Best City - 1. Bejing, 2. Shanghai, 3. Xi'an

The Stats

Days: 21

Money Spent: 7,000RMB ($1270NZ) each

Beer Consumed: 40.5 litres each

Distance Travelled: 3042kms

Photo requests from Chinese: 38

Days of Rain: 15

Different Types of Animal Eaten: 11

Shampoo and Shaving: 0

Cars built before 2001 (excluding taxis): 0