Crete

Unlike our previous post appears to suggest, we did not only give ourselves over to gluttony and wine during our vacation on Crete. We saw quite a lot of the islands' northwest coast and also explored the surroundings extensively on foot. According to my WiiFit step-counter, we walked an average of 7 km each day. This might be an explanation of why this gluttonous breakout did not cause that much of a BMI disaster when we got back.

But more about our adventures on Crete...
Below I will detail more of our pursuits on foot; our visit to Chania; and the two trips we took on the tourist train.

We walked a lot in the surroundings area of the Chania suburb, Agia Marina, where our hotel was. This included the nice beaches with crystal clear water, a small hill with an awesome view of Thodorou island on the one side and the White Mountains on the other, and picturesque buildings, which is an interesting mix of old and new. Below are some photos with more info.

The view from our hotel room. The sea and Thodorou island. The island is uninhabited and no humans are allowed on the island. It was declared a nature reserve, where the endangered Kri-kri mountain goats can procreate and live undisturbed. A myth about the island is that it is the leftover of a sea monster that wanted to attack the small sea side village but was turned into a rock by the gods in answer to the prayers of the villagers. Today you can still see the open mouth of the monster - ready to engulf the village.

Nice beaches along the coast

Crystal clear water

Nice view of the sea and island from a small hill. (An olive orchard in the foreground)

The view of the White mountains on the other side of the hill

Interestingly, on Crete the bottom parts of many things are painted white, houses, streetlamps and  trees (note also the legs of the animal/s :). The white is supposed to keep things cool and protects the trees against a certain tree disease. This tree grew right in the middle of a road... 

Obviously we got a bit of sun on the beach ...

Everywhere in this coastal tourist town, one could see traces of a bygone era of a small harbor town

The third day on Crete we took the bus to Chania, the second largest city on Crete after the capital, Heraklion. The history of Chania stretches into the mists of time. It was already an important city in Minoan times (27 centuries BC) when it was called Kydonia. It has a beautiful historic harbor and old town.

Lighthouse of Chania harbor

The harbor water was exceptionally clean and one could see schools of fish swimming underneath the boats

The snow capped "White mountains" form the backdrop to the historic Chania harbor

Wall of an old fort in the harbor

Chania - a mix of old and new

Chania old town

Small streets with eateries

Always time to look for interesting ants. Ronnie on the historic Kasteli hill in Chania, which has been inhabited since Neolithic times

We also visited the Archeological museum in Chania, which hold artifacts from excavations in the region. The museum building itself is very old and acted as a Franciscan church in the past. The exact date of building is unknown, but it is mentioned to
 have survived the great earthquake of 1595. In this photo various artifacts from graves are featured, including toys from a child burial.

Apparently the idea of shot glasses is very old :)

We also took two very pleasant outings on the "The Little Fun Train". This small tourist train/tractor is an interesting concept, a small tractor with passenger wagons that go on tours of the surroundings. There are multiple trips you can choose from with around 2-4 hours duration. We took the "Orange Valley" tour into the mountains and the "Pleasures of Crete" tour along the west coast. The Orange valley tour took us through rolling valleys of orange orchards with small towns (each with its own beautiful Greek Orthodox church building). We approached the White Mountains through small ravines in which Maple Trees were growing that reached ages of hundreds of years. At the foot of the White Mountains we had a rest stop at the small village of Meskla, while we enjoyed a glass of freshly pressed orange juice. The village of Meskla has a very old church. According to legends, this old church was built from stones that came from the temple of Artemis, which was built at this same site in ancient times. The old church is not used anymore and a new church was built just behind the old building. Below are some photos from the "Orange Valley" tour.

The old historic church in front of the new church

A very old Maple tree at the tea garden where we had our rest stop

The Little Fun Train

The tour along the west coast was very nice as well and had awesome views, a visit to a monastery with real monks and a guided tour of an olive factory. The tour started out following the coastal road along the northwest coast, passing traditional fishing villages and climbing over the Spatha Penisula. We visited the 14th century monastery of Gonia, which is still active today and then winded further up the narrow roads of Spatha Penissula with magnifiscent views of the Aegaen Sea. Reaching the top of the mountainous peninsula, we drove more inland through the olive plantations and small towns. We stopped at an olive oil factory (see more in our previous post here). Below are some pictures of our west coast tour.

Driving along the west coast - these small churches are found all over Crete and are memorials on places where people either lost their lives, or were saved

Winding road on the Spatha peninsula and breathtaking views over the Aegean sea. Thodorou island on the horizon

Enjoying the sun at a rest stop

I wondered who lived in that house on top of the hill and if they knew that their everyday view is probably one of the best views in the world. In the middle of olive orchards, surrounded by views of the Aegean sea coast and the White Mountains

In the heart of the Spatha Peninsula - rolling hills of olive orchards

Something very beautiful, and a common theme on Crete, that I thought I should mention, are the vines. You see them everywhere, old mature vines growing as "trees" outside, on porches, inside houses along the inner roofs, and even on top of roofs. A very beautiful and unique feature I thought.

Overall, both of us had a wonderful vacation and a delightful breakaway - we would really not mind going back to this island of treasures

Loot brought back from Crete, including cheese, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and some small mementos

C&R

Final thoughts on China (China Trip part 6 of 6)

In this last post on our adventures in China (our first post is here) we will mention some of the interesting similarities and differences that we observed. This contrast may be a bit weird as this is from the eyes of two South Africans who have been living in Sweden for 4 years traveling with two Swedes (one native the other from Latvia with Russian ancestry) and one Chinese person. As South Africans we pride ourselves on cultural diversity. This said, China is quite different from any place we have visited thus far.

The biggest difference is probably the language. We are not good at learning new languages and between Carina and I we can probably communicate in 2.8 languages. All of these are in the Germanic language group. Both the written and spoken Chinese language is thus completely unintelligible to us while less than 1% of the Chinese population speaks English (we assume that a smaller proportion of people speak either Swedish or Afrikaans but we did meet some Dutch speaking Chinese). Without a Chinese guide we would have struggled quite a lot. We also saw places where few westerners are able to travel, mostly due to the language barrier. This said, the people are very friendly and the international language of smiling and pointing does work. Also, spoken and written language are not at all important when you want to negotiate the purchase of anything. We however recommend that people who can only speak Germanic type languages travel in China with a Chinese friend since the experience becomes much richer (thanks Zheya).

hen in China it is important to remember that (with or without a guide), almost everything is negotiable and almost everything is for sale. The prices are of course a bit higher for people looking like us but even we could, at some places, get a “discount” of up to 70% on the printed price. With Zheya and sometimes the drivers negotiating we paid less for many souvenirs, tour guides, travel, river expeditions, various items of clothing, luggage and even room rates at the hotels. The price on food items were mostly not negotiated, but food is, in any case, extremely cheap in China.

Buying drinks from friendly shop owner

Throughout the previous 5 posts we have often referred to what we ate. One constant however, was that no meal was really small. It was often decided that we would have only a few bites to eat at some or other restaurant but these “few bites” turned into at least one dish for each member of the group +1 more dish to make sure it is enough. In addition we often had a bowl of rice or noodles in addition to these. All the dishes are shared, usually traveling past you on a lazy Susan. We struggled to finish the large amounts of food. In contrast, most of the Chinese in our group struggle to eat the same amount of western food here in Sweden. We thus speculate that the food in the west is much more rich in calories and thus make Chinese people uncomfortable to eat as much while the food in China is less rich but you need to eat a larger volume. Whatever the difference we ate a lot of different and interesting kinds of food. Some quite common in Sweden and South Africa others less so.

Eating was of course not straightforward. Every time we wanted to move a tasty morsel from the plate in front of us (we had a few seconds before it rotated away again), we needed to use chopsticks to do so. This is not a skill that we were born with and often we had a few onlookers in the distance giggling at our progress. Carina did bring a couple of plastic forks in case we started to starve but we rarely used them. More common were the use of our hands to pick up foodstuffs, we are from Africa after all.

2nd day with chopsticks

Another interesting difference is the unexpected temperature of accompanying drinks. We knew that breakfast is predominantly savory and were prepared for a range of unexpected flavors but we were often surprised by the temperature. The first incident that stood out was our first meal in China. We went to a restaurant to have porridge for lunch (both savory and sweet LINK). This was just after we walked in 30°+ temperatures and high humidity. Both Mats and Carina asked for water and both got steaming cups of boiled water. This is very common and all restaurants serve warm water. We also had a number of cold milk based teas, warm corn juice and once warm orange juice.

Warm corn juice

It is common practice to always boil tap water before drinking. This makes the water somewhat safer to drink, although it does not deal with the heavy metal pollutants. Bottled water is thus also extremely common (and quite cheap). Drinking water from the tap is however something that we take for granted. This was one of the issues in China that we found affecting how we go about our day much more than expected. Before traveling anywhere you need to either fill your bottles with boiled water or specifically stop somewhere to buy water. Also before you go to bed you need to boil water if you are used to have a sip during the night. Brushing your teeth is another conundrum. Most Chinese we spoke to say it is OK if you do not swallow the water. But if the problem is bacteria and other organic substances, having these in your mouth is disconcerting. Brushing using a cup of boiled water is also not as easy if you are used to flowing water from a tap. It is strange that we are so used to the luxury of clean tap water that when we need to boil it, it has such a big impact on our planning. When we came back we appreciated this luxury a lot more but unfortunately you quickly forget how nice and easy some things are when you are use to it…

Nongfu Spring Water - our favorite brand

Unfortunately we found that littering is OK in China. Sweden is extremely clean in this regard and I think they place a lot of emphasis on recycling and dealing with trash. South Africa is a bit more like China in this respect but not as bad. The huge number of people in the cities could be one reason for all the litter. If the same proportion of people litter in China as in South Africa the absolute amount of trash will be much higher. But we also found that it is quite common in the countryside areas to find a lot of litter all around. A small group of Chinese people who we polled indicated that people do not see littering as a problem and it may remain so for a while yet.

There are a number of negative effects of a large population such as in China. However, it is also incredibly awesome that a country is able to run reasonably efficiently with 1.35 billion people. The contrast in the density of people in Sweden and China is big. Walking on the street any time of day there are people. In some areas the noise is incredible just from the amount of people. We were often swept along in a crowd of people moving from one area to another without too much say in which direction we were going. This was especially true in some areas in the Forbidden city and even more so in the subway. Our slightly taller stature did help to keep the group together although we often lost sight of Zheya (she was however always able to see us and came to get us again). In spite of this it was reasonably easy to use public transport. This is just one point in case that the Chinese government is able to cope with the large population. Of course there are many things that are not perfect in China (not that there is any perfect country), but just thinking about the numbers of people it is an incredible feat that it actually functions as one country.

Crowds visiting the summer palace

Lively shopping street at night

It is also clear that people are moving into the cities. There are multiple high rise buildings constructed everywhere. There is also a lot of construction of roads. In most of the tourist areas many hotels are currently being built.

During our time in China, road construction had some effect on our travel and caused a bit of emotional stress for some members in our group. The traffic in China is heavy on finished roads. On roads under construction it is worse. The people bend the rules when driving (never speeding as in South Africa) and a lot of weaving through traffic occurs. This caused great upset for the law abiding Swedish member in our group who would still be in the traffic jam if it was up to him to drive. We also had problems when crossing the road on foot. Here big groups of people cross, not always at pedestrian crossings, and the slow moving traffic comes to a halt until the group has passed. One member of our group usually remained on the other side until someone went to collect him and calmly talking him through the traffic.

After a few hours in traffic - new bridge in distance

Very light traffic

Apart from these small problems we were able to go to most places. We were only denied to stay at one hotel. Apparently no foreigners were allowed. We however suspect that this is more about regulations for hotels than any dislike towards us. Most hotels were quite nice. One difference between hotels in Sweden and in China is that people are allowed to smoke in most buildings. Many rooms therefore had a slight odour of old smoke. A larger difference is however the window from the bedroom into the bathroom. Many hotel rooms had these (some opaque some clear) and you could therefore see whatever someone was doing in the bathroom.

Room with a view

All hotel rooms where we stayed had western style toilets (some visible from the bed as mentioned). More common is however squat toilets. As South Africans we have experience with western style toilets, pit toilets, outhouses and the veldtie. The last one, at least to some extent, helped us prepare for the squat toilets. Just to make sure we had the correct technique, Carina and I looked at a number of youtube videos with helpful instructions (e.g. it is important not to lift your heels when squatting also remember to always take your own paper).

All in all we enjoyed the vacation very much. 

We clearly stood out from the crowd and were often stared at, laughed at and photographed. There is no problem with this since we did the same and have way more photos of random Chinese people. It is definitely one of the best experiences we have had and highly recommended that everyone find a Chinese friend and visit this lovely country.

We hope to return and experience more.

R&C

p.s. Thanks again to all our travel companions, we had a lovely time with you guys.