After Hong Kong, we left the south of China and went on to the capital Beijing (北京). The first days we stayed at a very helpful couchsurfer, later we switched to a Hostel again. That was kind of difficult. In China, not all Hotels are allowed to take foreigners - they need a special license for that. We knew that before, but we never found it to be a problem - at all other places we never went into a Hotel that rejected us. My impression is this rule is only enforced in the capital. Many Hotels are booked out at the moment and we had an unplesant experience with the Drum Tower Hostel: We got a confirmation per email the day before that they have a free room for us. When we got there, there was no free room. When we showed them the email, one of the Hostel's staff laughed at us. We didn't find this very funny.

We were in Beijing during the birthday of the chinese communist party (CCP). We didn't notice that much of it, except a big monument on Tian'anmen square (天安门广场).

We had some trouble with our next travelling steps, which I'll write up in detail in one of the next blog entries.

Pictures from Beijing

After staying on Hainan island, we went on to Hong Kong (香港). The main reason for that was a visa issue. A chinese tourist visa usually allows a stay for 30 days and we were nearing that 30 day periode. However, we had a double-entry visa which is valid for two entries with 30 days each. It would have been possible to request an extension of the stay for more than 30 days, but that would've taken several days we had to stay at the same place. So it was easier to just leave the country and come back at some point.

Although Hong Kong is officially part of China, it has its own migration and border system, its own currency (the Hong Kong Dollar) and going to Hong Kong from China is like going to another country. Hong Kong itself requires no visa for EU citizens for up to 90 days.

It was terribly difficult to get any accomodation. All Hotels we found were far beyond what we were willing to pay. In the end, for the first night we payed 350 HK$ (around 30 €) for a room without a window in a small hostel. The hostel was located in a big building called Mirador Mansion near Tsim Sha Tsui (尖沙咀) station which was full of mini-hostels, most of them only with a couple of rooms. However, most of them were booked out. Luckily, for the next day we found a room in the same building for 300 HK$ which was much better and had a window (where we could see the swimming pool on top of the next building, part of the Holiday Inn hotel, which was one of those we found far too expensive).

In general I can say that although Hong Kong is somehow part of China, many things there are completely different. It feels much more like a western city. It has a lot of foreigners, many of them from India - which was good for us, because we could easily get vegetarian food in Indian restaurants. Also noteworthy is that English is the official second language in Hong Kong, so communication was much easier.

Hong Kong pictures (as always, not uploaded yet)