As the wedding couple I recently photographed is well-known in our country, my pictures were published in (the gossip part of) our largest news paper (De Telegraaf), as well as some national news television shows: Shownews and RTL-boulevard (site & television show).
Below is a paper scan:
I was asked to shoot the photo’s on the wedding of our friends. As photography is more a hobby than a profession, I was a bit anxious about it at start; there’s only one chance to get it right. However, I like a challenge and prepared well. I made sure I had plenty of good (and spare) equipment which I know how to handle, and I planned certain pictures/moments during the day. My own photography equipment is quite suited for the job, and I borrowed an additional body from a friend. As the wedding would take place inside a church (low lighting), and we planned on taking a group picture there, I borrowed studio flash lighting and looked like a pro 
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I’m lucky the couple is quite used to being photographed, so they know how to pose. The weather was really sunny, so everything went smooth. Here are the first pictures, I’m still converting the others from RAW to something useful:
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Down at the ferry I met this funny dude, with his own website. He and his dog entertained us well while waiting for the ferry.
I had a long weekend in Barcelona… 
Some nice photographic opportunities with the sunny weather in this beautiful city. People seem really relaxed here…
We had a splendid 3-weeks trip to China; in short we’d planned the following trip. Only the flights were fixed dates though…
| august 18 | Arrival Beijing @ 12:40 |
| august 19 | Beijing, Tiananmen Square, the forbidden City |
| august 20 | Beijing, Great wall, 10 km walk from Jinshanling to Simatai |
| august 21 | Beijing, visit some parks, shop around |
| august 22 | Beijing & Leave by train to Pingyao @ 19.43 uur |
| august 23 | Arrival Pingyao @ 06.56 uur |
| august 24 | Pingyao & Leave by train to Xi’an @ 19.41 uur |
| august 25 | Arrival Xi’an @ 06.31 uur |
| august 26 | Xi’an, visit terracotta warriors |
| august 27 | Xi’an, Hua Shan Mountains |
| august 28 | Xi’an & Fly to Guilin, 2 hour flight for about € 120 each |
| august 29 | Guilin |
| august 30 | Guilin, bike to the mountain tops |
| august 31 | Guilin, take the bus to Longsheng 2-3 hours; Huaping National Nature Reserve |
| september 1 | Longsheng Hot Springs National Forest Park |
| september 2 | Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces |
| september 3 | Guilin, by boat over Li river to Yangshuo |
| september 4 | Yangshuo bike to the Moonhill |
| september 5 | Yangshuo by bike to Fuli village, or something like that |
| september 6 | Yangshuo & Leave to Guangzhou by bus |
| september 7 | Arrive at Guangzhou; don’t stay long in this indistrual town |
| september 8 | Flight to Amsterdam at 10:00 am, arrive at 18:35 pm |
| don’t forget to enjoy your holliday |
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It was still early in the afternoon after we’d checked-in and showered, so we decided to explore a bit of Beijing by foot. It takes quite a while to get anywhere, as Beijing is bigger than our map implies at first sight, but after an hour of walking, being kept company by a still hot sun, we’d passed the backside of the forbidden city and had a relaxing stroll around Behai Park.
We walked along a little further to have a look at the so-promised lovely shop in Xi’an Men Dijjaje, but were not impressed (yet). We were however in for a big gastronomic surprise in one of the small restaurants; my chicken-with-something dish was served with head, claws (I could count three on each leg) and more parts I’m not used to eat. It was like the whole chicken had been thrown in a blender and the result had been thrown the wok. Ah well, the good thing of each ordering a different dish and the Chinese custom to share dishes is that you won’t starve in this country given some company
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We had some small stuff to eat and decided to do proper breakfast at the Starbucks; the one which supposedly managed it’s way into the forbidden city and that everybody complains about .
First however, the taxi dropped us at the huge Tian’men square in front, which has become famous for the protesting student being run over by a tank (in reality this occurred on an other square nearby). The
square (2) is packed with buildings celebrating (3) communism in general, and Mao Ze Dung in specific. Maybe, once the Chinese learn about some of the cruelties that occurred under his regime, the square one day might regain it’s former grandeur…We skipped the dead mummy of the great leader and headed towards the once forbidden city. We were not alone however; at least ten thousand (!) other tourists were banging at the city gate. Or at least hanging around in front of it . Most Chinese seemed quite used to such a big crowd where the only way is to go with the flow. The funny thing is that these people on first hand didn’t strike me as tourists. In China, the roles are divided differently. In most countries it’s the westerners who are the tourists crawling over the main sights, and the local people are doing the things tourists regard as interesting. In China however, the western-looking people are a very, very small minority (this might temporarily change a little during the Olympics though). It actually makes sense if you think about 1,329,349,388 people living in this country; they all want to visit the forbidden city at least once in their life, so that’s 1.3 billion divided by the average life expectancy of 72.88 years (actual figures from 2007, don’t you love wikipedia?) = 51000 Chinese visitors each day as an average minimum, assuming that every day of the year the forbidden city is visitable.
Being in a crowd (4), there was no way of avoiding confrontation with Chinese habits that strike us as rude; spitting on the ground, shouting loudly in the otherwise most serene places, photographing everything with your mobile phone, throwing waste wherever you feel like, shameless jumping of the line (when you’ve recovered from amazement or laughing at this ‘childish’ behavior, be prepared to use your elbows and protect your spot like the rest!) and non-existent honoring of your personal space (your shoe is someone else’s standing spot). There’s a Dutch saying “to be like an elephant in a porcelain closet” that indicates someone being rude or being unaware of the proper protocol. I used to associate it with Westerners being in Asian countries and doing all these things wrong. After one day in China, I’m convinced that Chinese people will have adaptation problems in our country as well
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There’s a lot to write about the forbidden city but I won’t. It is big, impressive and it’s a must-visit in Beijing. After a few hours walking around, we left for one of the parks just at the back of the forbidden city. Nice statues and flowers, but what impressed us most was all how this park functioned as a meeting place for (mostly elderly) Chinese people, playing sports, dancing, playing cards, writing glyphs with water, playing music and singing kind-of spontaneously down the whole park.
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At the end we had the option of climbing or para sailing down. Although security is written with a lowercase ’s’ in China, we survived our
glide down the canyon (5)
A nice day for celebrating Janneke’s birthday… |
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In the afternoon we biked our way through the city and went to see some ruins/temples nearby. We took it easy for a bit….
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At night the place looks magical!
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It turned out to be good fun. We were taken into many private yards, through back doors of people we wouldn’t meet ourselves. We could see for ourselves how the people in China live and had many conversations with our guide acting as a translator. We’d consider living here really, really basic but it’s mostly ok. The city reminds me of the Crouching-Tiger, Hidden Dragon movie, with real old Chinese buildings and roofs….
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We’re one day ahead of schedule and take our night train to Xi’an tonight… It’s quite a hassle at the station to get to the right sleeping bed (we can’t read our ticket, the employees can’t explain it properly to us) but we end up sleeping fine…
The place with the Terracotta Warriors turns out to be huge! And only a small portion supposedly has been excavated so far. We’re already used to the loads of Chinese people, but one funny things is that everybody wants to take a picture from every possible angle, with him or herself placed in front of every single sight. You’re not supposed to stand still and look for a while, because the people behind you want to take wants another photograph from that angle… A well, it’s not that bad.
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It’s quite impressive what the Qin emperor had made himself. A bit like the Pharaoh’s created for their own after life’s…
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Getting our way back is a bit special. We’re met by a man with a mini-bus claiming he goes to 西安 (Xi’an). I’m not worried about the transport itself, but more about the destination. We’ve learned you can’t verify by speech whether you’re talking about the same place; there’s always a range of places in the neighborhood pronounced subtly different (for us, that is), in this case Shi’an, Zhi’an, Xhi’an Si’an and Xi’an. Written communication does not ease things if we’re the interpreting party, but pointing in a book generates more trust. In this case I had the driver point out on our lonely planet map where he would halt the bus in (the right) Xi’an. It was the central bus station, so this guy knew what he was talking about and we jumped in
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After quite some hours of climbing, we’re confronted with the first fully-booked hostel. Heavily over-priced, but there’s no way back any more (the cable car stopped and walking at night is not an attractive option). We join a group of young Taiwanese students, which are also looking for affordable, nice accommodation. We plan to let them do the talking to the owners of the other hotels on this peak. As it turns out, the police officers guarding the path are obviously lying by telling the only available and close hotel is the one operated by their family. Our new-made friends are used to these practices, and we ignore the sleeping recommendations given by the officers.
It turns out all the hotels we see on this hill are spooky and overpriced, but we end up in a monastery in a room filled with a few Chinese families. We have some nice conversations (mostly with the girl that studies English) before we go to bed
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It’s full of red ribbons with locks attached, which supposedly brings good luck. We can’t resist copying this behavior It’s a nice walk around the mountain, with
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Before the day ends we’re back in Xi’an, very hungry after this exhausting trip!
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Today we check out the city. There are quite a bit of parks and caves to see. The Reed flute cave is really just beautiful. Probably because it’s still our first cave (of quite some few to come). The guide (not with traditional cave helmets, but on high heels) in the grotto’s most important story-line dealt with other people’s fantasies about beautifully -but artificially- lighted rock formations, and she managed to present this all as facts: “here you see a twisted lion looking back on a dragon’s head turned upside-down”. Well… a lot of fantasy is required here. And just like clouds or Rorschach tests; you can’t be that sure what you see is the only interpretation. The communistic history probably taught the people to think what they’re told !
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When we arrive at the Seven stars park and visit the zoo, it’s such a pity sight. The animals are caged in a way we probably stopped doing 50 years ago, and I really feel sorry for the depressed kakatoo’s, panda and another bears. We leave in a hurry and I’m happy to see the
monkeys running around without constraints… (7). The park is heavily used by elderly people playing some sort of domino game (8).In another bus on our way to Dazhai (for about two hours), we finished our rice + self chose baked vegetables. And this small bus was a nice way to see how the local women with their long, long hair transport their goods and sociably interact. We of course couldn’t understand them, and even the few Mandarin words I learned were of little use as they speak yet an other language…
The woman who’d talked us into joining her to come and sleep at “her house” (we still had to see about that) was just fluently enough in English to make use feel comfortable, but still you never really know where you’re going. Like this whole trip to China it’s abit of a risk; you might in the end feel ripped off for a few Euros, or it might turn out to be amazingly well….
After arriving at a muddy, empty bus stop we had to climb quite a bit. On the way I had to disappoint some long-haired ladies which offered to carry my bag; but I couldn’t possibly let these small people carry my day pack, could I?
Half an hour up the mountain was the JingKeng Hotel (house) where we found a room with the best view ever! She hadn’t lied, she really lived here and managed the place with her husband. The rooms were very well, and quite affordable. They have to, because, unlike you’d expect with a lonely plant calling this place off-the-beaten track (if it was, it wouldn’t be mentioned I guess), there are a lot of similar accommodations in this village. And the bad news is they’re planning a round through here (we asked about a few land-metering guys running around).
The house in this small village are built in a quite typical style; all wood, several stories increasing in size/perimeter as the level increases. For half an hour we strolled around the village (we only walked for 5 minutes, the rest was spent chatting around) and had quite nice food at our guest house. Catering us seems an important source of income for them, but everything is reasonably prices for the village (40 Yuan for a double, food+beer for two for about 50/60 Yuan). The “hard part” seems to get rid of all the local sales women/girls in the evening, trying to sell you more & more stuff you don’t like nor need. I had big fun though…
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The clouds cluttered our view of the upcoming sun (we could only see it properly at around 8.20) but still it’s quite a sight to see the LongJi (like a Dragon’s backbone) rice fields slowly turn green.
Pancakes for breakfast were served with chives instead of sweet sugar or sirup, but it’s quite nice. After we left the hostel, our own attempts to find Ping’an kept us circling around. We had no map, we can’t read the signs and if you ask someone they’ll start a whole story in Chinese (still Chinese to me) and point in at least four directions during their explanation. So, after two hours, many rice fields and dead and detours we were back at our hostel to hire a guide (4 euros for half a day). He would show us which of the scarce, Chinese-only signs were the right ones and he carried Janneke’s day pack without complaining.
The trip was sweaty but worthwhile. No tourists except us trotted the path, so the
small villages (9) we passed are still small, laid-back clusters of houses. Like said, the two land-metering guys indicated a bus-proof rood will bring “prosperity” to this fertile, unspoilt green Unesco heritage and most of the things we like about this place will be exchanged for coca-cola and technology. But who’s to blame?We passed grave hills and long-haired yao-women before we reached the Ping’an lookout. Only a fast sprint saved us from getting soaked as the rain started pouring out from the heaven in an instant. We had lunch at the first hotel we encountered (nice place) but put the nice 60 yuan double room on hold in search for a room with an even better view.
We checked out several, promising establishments which externally promised better views, only to find out that we like some level of services (like a hotelier talking to us instead of just to the phone). And views like in Dazhai were not to be found in this place.
After checking in to our first-visited hostel and a short nap we climbed the lookout point number 1 (every lookout is numbered in this area, and the villagers refer to them like that) before having a beer or two on the improvised, not too-strong looking bamboo terraces managed by local youngsters, and overlooking the rice fields. This place is a lot more touristic… For dinner we did something similar in the village, though the place seemed a lot more stable. Life is good….
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In the bus I feel like a sardine in a can (squeezed) and we hop over to wait for a other hour (more comfortably seated though) to get to the “famous” Wenguing hot springs. When we passed a ghost hotel (beautiful hotel, 30 years ago, but no guest for the last five years) we should have known; the hot springs were once an amazing place, but investments had stopped and the reaping begun (admission fees are outrageous in this place). We’d traveled quite some hours to get here, so hot springs we would see…
The spa resort is located between some carved out sections of a river, with tropical trees growing high up the ranges. The pools are located n natural looking sections and the natural hot springs serve around 30 different pools, in varying sizes and temperature (from 58 degrees to 30 Celsius). The awkward thing is we’re the only ones, and the (yet-another) huge luxurious hostel attached to this place seems completely desolated. Close inspection reveals that 2/3 of the spa is closed, indicated by sign like “out-of-order”, “cleaning in-progress” or “repairing”. Nobody here is working on any such activity, but it keeps us from entering the pools.
Ah well, we can’t complain. So far we’ve been impressed by the Chinese crows, but I thinks overpricing and bad serviced has dealt with that problem here in the end…
Three hours of bussed later we’re back in Guilin. Arranging a taxi for a decent price see,ed quite a hassle at the bus station (8 or 9 Yuan instead of 25 should suffice), but 1 minute of walking up the road left the expensive behind us.
We planned to go by a private boat to YangShuo, and because we want to take our luggage sharing the boat with an other couple is not a real alternative. So we reserved our own private boat for tomorrow. Time to get some sushi and some sleep
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The clouds made it almost mystical. We passed many local fishermen utilizing nets, fishing rods or cormorants. One of the cormorant fishers posed well, an as I liked the old man I decided to award him with double of what’s considered fair in this place; 5 Yuan instead of 2 or so. But like always with the Chinese they manager to “amaze” me with brutality and instead of being happy he reacted unsatisfied an demanded more. In this case he wanted 20 Yuan, which is more than half what he would make in a day, and this for 30 seconds of “work”. It’s a common reaction in China as the merchants do the same. For my first shirt I paid 5 times as much as I would do now, and still the seller would complain about being ripped off. The general rule her is to never show you’re happy about a deal; always keep whining no matter how much you’ve earned.
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They hope you will lose your wits by claiming a day salary is “nothing” to them, and they have no problem with asking more money for goods then we can get them for in Europe. It just takes a lot of bargaining time to discover you can buy a t-shirt for 20 yuan (not always in the main tourist areas though).
Anyway, 2 and a half hours further on the beautiful Li Jiang (漓江), the load speed-boat engine came to a halt to let us out in Yangshuo (陽朔縣).
River view hotel is the first ok-looking hotel we encounter after hundreds of still-empty night-marked stalls. During lunch there I talked to one of the guests and discovered we’re already quite central in Yangshuo. the rooms look really nice here, and they kind of guarantee a noise-free night (as opposed to the places in the main tourist street around the corner), so this will be our base for the next few days.
We explored the city, leaving the biking plans for a later, less wet, day. There’s an abundance of clothing and tourist goods, and luckily we have our time to get it at some decent price.
I would like to take some nice statue/work of art to hang somewhere in our house, but China seems more of a copy-country than a design-one. Nothing really special so far…
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On our way back we had a quite primitive (manual) car washer clean our bikes. We couldn’t possibly bring them back that muddy. We still had some time left to play the tourist
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Dinner was at the night market. Point and order you meal filled with awkward creatures if you like. Mostly local here, a little oily food, but a great atmosphere. Chinese people keep treating us like we’re famous; taking pictures of us and the boisterous ask us to pose with them or tell us we’re so handsome. China is great .
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I just returned from 10 days in Curaçao. The wheather was great (hot though) and I did a bit of scuba, snorkling and hiking. Very relaxing
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I just returned from three weeks in Peru, and it was great fun. We traveled what’s also known as the gringo-trail: starting in Lima, passing Pisco (with Paracas), Nazca (saw some lines), Arequipa (a Cañón with condors), Puno and ending in Cuzco (Machu Picchu!). Even for a lousy Spanish speaker, getting around is easy and communicating is a lot of fun. I loved the five day trek around the Salkantay Mountain to Machu Picchu.
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The Salkantay trek boasts very diverse nature, high (hijg hijg) passes and beautiful views. It’s a good alternative to the classic Inca trail if you’re not much of a 4-months-in-advance booker either…
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, and no waiting lines!).
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We stayed at a place called West End Studios, nothing special, but at least affordable around here. Next stop is Peru!
Having tested it for a wedding party, I can say I like the speed of taking shots. It’s not fit for action sports with its 3 photos per second, but the buffer is huge so it allows me to keep on clicking. Also, write speed to the memory card has become a real lot quicker (blink once) than with the 300D. What I like best is that finally my flashphotos seem to come off nice. Like the E-TTL2 system, which should somehow be supported in the 300D, finally seems to really work. Here’s what the experts think (review at dpreview.com).
Anyway, I got rid of the 300D through Dutch ebay variant www.marktplaats.nl. I’ll come up with some additional user experiences soon..
There’s a cool film (with a second part) to give an impression, although you’ll have to ignore the American style exaggerative comments
The unethical side of the exhibition makes you think though: Chinese convicts lacking family officially had no one that could be interested in their funeral, so the bodies were given away for research (and obviously more commercial purposes). Oops
