四川大地震 (The Great Earthquake of Sichuan)

One of significant damage to the apartment 

Okay... I'll start with a bit of story that has been told to me before arriving here, in Chengdu, Sichuan province. When we were asked which exchange partner university we want to be in, I chose Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu. There aren't many students wanna go there, because I heard that there was a big earthquake in Chengdu back in 2008. Point. I didn't hear about anything or ask about anything else. It was 2008, well in Indonesia, there is an earthquake several times almost each month in certain areas, I felt once in Bandung but it wasn't big. So then I said, "Well.. let's hope it won't be there when we're there."

Before yesterday I came home late from my friends's place and it was raining lightly when I went to bed at almost 3 am. In the morning I was awaken by a really big shaking on my bed, and I saw the curtain of my window shaking, also the door to the balcony. There are some building construction close to my apartment that every morning make a lot of noise followed by vibration on our apartment. For a minute I thought it was it, but then I said that this one isn't, it's surely way bigger. I went out of my apartment and saw some neighbors already ran to the stairs. For a second I saw the pool and it creeps me out when I saw the water made some medium wave due to the shaking. I ran down the stairs to the door of the building. It was stuck and can't be opened for almost a minute, but with the help of the neighbors we pushed hard and we succeeded to open this God damn door. A lady took a bike to hold the door opened. Then I was outside, waiting if there'll be the aftershocks, which is usually happened. Until today there are about hundreds aftershocks after the earthquake.

The door we stuck on

When I was outside, I saw a lot of people on the street, some in their cars and seemed like they wanted to go out of town. Big traffic on the road, and the small restaurants were full of crowd taking their breakfast. It was about 8.30 in the morning and since I got here, I never saw a lot of Chengdu people are out that early. When I got back to my apartment, I checked the news on internet, it was 7.0 of magnitude and the epicenter in a town called Ya An, still in the Sichuan province, about 100-ish km from Chengdu. They estimated the dead victims reached hundreds, thousand injured and that can still be increased. :(

The last big earthquake in Sichuan was in 2008, 8.0 magnitude and the estimation of dead victims was about 90.000 of people. The epicenter was back then about 80 km from Chengdu, and the dead victims in Chengdu city was about 80.000.
Hundreds to thousands aftershocks stated until two days after the first earthquake.

Traffic after the earthquake

Welcome to Chengdu

It's been almost a month and half I'm in Chengdu. It's one of biggest cities in China, located in the Sichuan province. I'm doing my exchange program for a semester in Sichuan Normal University in order to learn better my Mandarin lessons. Sichuan province is very famous for its spicy cuisine, for example for their Huo Guo or hotpot.

At first glance, Chengdu is full of pollution due to the building construction everywhere. Every local people I met always said that Chengdu is a promising city for an astonishing development in the future, maybe it can be another Shanghai in a few years. Chengdu is also very known to be the city where there are still pandas in the wild nature. At north part of Chengdu, there's a Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Since their population is in a menace of the extinction, it is more and more encouraged to keep their existence preserved. Despite of the big population and the stronger its development gets, you wouldn't find foreigners as many as you can see in Shanghai. It is also not very frequent to meet local people who speak English. I had a little hard time finding my apartment and/or getting general information since I don't speak really well Mandarin.

For the transportation, Chengdu in full of public buses, subway and taxis. For buses, if you have the transportation card, you pay 1,80 CNY everytime you take it, and 2 CNY if you don't have the card. The card works for the subway too. The card costs for about 24 CNY and then you can charge it from 20 CNY. Chengdu for now only has two lines for its subway. The one which cross the west-east part of the city and another one from south to north. In every map of Chengdu, whether from the hostel or the tourist information center, all the streets and information are written in Chinese characters, so you better want to have sort of dictionary or Pleco application on your smartphone(Pleco is an apps that helps to recognize the Chinese characters or to translate). Not forgotten to mention, after a month and half, I never found a single bus route map, I started to think that they just don't have any(I'll update if turn out there's one). For cabs, in Chengdu there are these green color cabs that are more reliable than other ones. There are two types of green cabs, they really look similar but one has 8 CNY for their starting flag, and another one starts from 9 CNY. At night the starting flag rise up for 1 CNY more. The cabs drivers always speak Chinese, so if your Chinese isn't really good, just try to learn some sentences and pronounce the address really well, because it happened to me quite often that these drivers don't know the city very well so they have to ask their colleagues by phones.

Well, maybe that's all for the opening of my story in China. I'll try to keep it updated along the stay. Really hope to find more about this city, the province and the country.

BsxxxARS

On the way to the Great Wall Country

So the story is, me n my boyfriend got accepted to the exchange program at Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu, China. Both of us are students in Université de La Rochelle, taking master degree of Applied Foreign Language. Now is the first step of mine to get know how the life is in China. We took the lowcost company Air Asia to fly from Bandung to Chengdu on 4th March, right on my Dad's birthday. We paid about 120 euros each for a one way flight.

We first took 20 kg of bagage but then I realized that our stuffs were just abundant, so I contacted the Air Asia call center to make the change. This modification only can be done until 4hours before flight. The guy said first that to buy 15 kg of bagage would cost 225k IDR. But when I said OK to buy it, he said since I already 20kg of bagage, it is impossible to buy 15 kg with the price he told me before. But it is counted as an 'upgrade' of bagage quantity so I just have to pay the difference of the price. I said "Ok, and jow much is it?" He said that I have to pay 370k IDR. I said "How can it be that expensive?" He said that since I wanted to add 15 kg so in total I'd have 35 kg of bagage, it costs about 700k something, then I already paid half to the 20kg, so what I do is just pay the rest. I asked him if I can buy less, like 10 kg instead of 15kg. He said the minimum is 15kg. Well.. So 35kg it was.

Our flight was at 11.35 AM so we needed to be there 2 hours before which was at 9.30 AM. We got there, waiting a bit cause there was late 30min.
So now we're already at LCC Kuala Lumpur Int'l airport, waiting our next flight to Chengdu at 18.00 PM.

Ok, let's change some money to get some food. ;)

Visit to Bordeaux

Bordeaux,

Located in the region of Aquitaine, Bordeaux is indeed a famous city in the country where it’s placed and also in the regard of world for its wine. Since it’s just 2 hours from La Rochelle, I decided to go there when I have some time and then I went there for the holiday of La Toussaint (it’s the holiday for the Dead People). As I’m a member of Couchsurfing, I met once in Bandung a couchsurfer from Bordeaux who visited Indonesia. Her name is Natacha, she was with her brother whose name is Nicolas. After the trip, Nicolas continued working in China and Natacha went back to Bordeaux but we still kept contact until my retour to France. At the moment, Natacha can’t host me but she said that she’d find someone who can and there’s this Franc. Franc is not a couchsurfer but he hosted already some foreigners at his apartment, and this time, me.

I had a plan to do the covoiturage (it’s a system in France of getting a ride cheaper by car. Normally worked for someone who has car and doesn’t wanna pay too expensive for gas and highway, so they offer some place for people with the same destination but to share for the gas and highway- see the site : www.covoiturage.fr). Another way to get to Bordeaux is by train. The price depends actually of a lot of things. For example the age of the passager, the date, the member card, etc. Me, I have what’s called carte 12-25. It’s a card which we pay about 50 euros if we’re 12-25 years old to have a big discount for train tickets. Next year I’m gonna be 25, but I was just lucky because lately it’s the 30th anniversary of SNCF(the company which runs the trains in France), so they created the limited edition of carte 12-30 which can be used until I get 30. So now I have this card and usually this card offers almost 50% of discount from the price normal, and of course until I get 30. J cool, huh?

I checked first the train ticket and to get to Bordeaux, I’ll only pay about 14 euros. But the covoiturage offers 10 euros. So I contacted two different person with whom I’ll get the ride to Bordeaux and to return to La Rochelle after. But the morning on the D-day, the covoitureuse sent me an sms and said that she had a problem that made her not be able to go to Bordeaux that day. I quite pissed me off but I still can catch the train and arrived in Bordeaux at the same hour I told to Natacha. Once I arrived in Bordeaux, it was 6 pm already(I took the train at 4 pm). I went to the toilet in Gare Saint Jean (that’s the name of the train station in Bordeaux). I tell you guys now, you have to pay 0,50 cent to enter the toilet. For some it’s nothing, but if you can find another one which is free, better go there. :D

To reach Franc’s place, I need to take tram. Yes, there are trams in Bordeaux and unlike the normal trams, these trams are run by the rail and not by the electric cables on them. Bordeaux is the first city which does this system, though seems they will change it soon due to the high price they paid for it. But it’s impressive..

I bought the tram ticket at the train station for 1,40 euros and took the C tram on les Aubiers direction then I stopped at the stop Paul Doumer. That’s the second time I met Natacha but now it’s in France. It’s so funny. We both laughed while remembering the night we met in Bandung. She took me to Franc’s apartment because he went running with some friends from the sport club. After dropping my backpack, we went out for some apéro(aperitif). Natacha took me for a walk along the sidewalk of Garonne, the river which flows along the city. Then she showed me miroir d’eau(the water mirror) which is located in front of Place de la Bourse, the majestic  buildings with the monuments of three Goddesses at the front. The last time, the Goddesse wore the pink ribbons, because October is the month for the International Awareness of Breast Cancer. So this Water Mirror is actually a place in a square form which is filled with a two inched of water that can reflect the lights of the Palace de la Bourse at night. I saw also the Pont de Pierre(Pierre Bridge) which connects rive gauche(the left side of Garonne where the city center of Bordeaux is located) and rive droite (the right side of Garonne which is called Le quartier de la Bastide, the industrial area of Bordeaux but most of people don’t consider this area as a part of Bordeaux).

Natacha took me walking on the old street of Bordeaux where I can see a lot of restaurant, and including the asiatic ones. She told me this japanese resto called Fufu which is very famous and always crowded. We took apéro in the bar next to the Théâtre called bar The Regent. We ordered Lillet, a white wine for aperitif from Bordeaux (for the complete info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillet ). It’s about 8 euros a glass.

I was really curious about this Fufu restaurant and wanna taste their foods. Then we went there, bought it and went home with. I met Franc finally. He’s a nice guy, open-minded and always nice to talk with. We talk about mostly everything that we can share like computer, culture or traveling. That night I posted in CS group of Bordeaux for a coffee the day after. In the morning I got a response from a Cser and then we changed number. I sent her message and we met at Quinconces where there were a lot of carnival rides such as ferris wheel, merry-go-round and jetcoaster. But then again I got a little bit lost until we met in front of La Place de Bourse again. This girl named Farah, she was just awesome. She took me sightseeing the city and explain the brief history at the same time. Bordeaux was once fenced by the great walls and there were some big gates to access the city center. One of them is called Porte de Cailhau. The walls are already crashed but they still keep the gates for the history.

There’s a street called Rue Sainte Catherine(St Catherine street) which is said to be the longest shopkeeper street in Europe with approximately 15 km. At the end of this street, there’s this La Place de la Victoire. We can find  here a monument dedicated for wine, only in Bordeaux and in front of this monument, there’s a statue of a big turtle and a little one aside. The turtle is also the symbole of wine itself. Like the grapes he bites in his mouth just like the grapes on Dyosnisos’s(the God of grapes in Greeks Mythology) head. Farah also showed me the traditional market at Place Saint Michel where found the very high tour which people can see from far. We went also to the famous Cathédrale Saint André, located at the Place of Pabelan. After that, we passed in front of Hôtel de Ville(if translated directly will be ‘Hotel of the City’) which is in fact the City Hall.

At the end of the day, I continue the sightseeing by myself because Farah had something to do. While waiting for Natacha to dine together, I went to see the Grosse Cloche(the Big Bell) which was created to warn if there’s a fire in the city.

The night we went to the restaurant at Place de la Victoire, called Auguste or usually called Chez Auguste. It’s very famous of its burger, but that night I ordered Steak tartar. I met Simon, a french guy, a couchsurfer whom I met when I did my trip to Bangkok last July. It was so funny that we met again here, in France. Then Natacha introduced me also Fabienne and Manu. It was really fun that night. I left this city the day after. I did my covoiturage with a french woman named Magalie. She was with her two daughters, and there’s another covoitureuse name Iba who’s originally from Lebanon(actually I don’t know exactly the spelling but that’s how it’s pronounced). We had a really good conversation and I’m looking forward to meet them again. 


I just had a great trip to Bordeaux.

BsxxxARS