Karaoke: KTV

If you have been to Asia then you have held a microphone in your hands, half drunk and attempted to sing John Denver's 'Country Roads' or Backstreet Boys' 'I Want It That Way.' And after one year you will be trying your hand at local hits in Chinese!

No matter how bad you are it turns into fun and you never want to let go of the mic. You see the words on the screen and you turn into an idol for those few minutes. The audience explodes with applause! Glasses raise into the air and another toast is made to friendship!

Here is an evening out with some friends enjoying each other's attempts at becoming a rock star with a little help from liquid courage.

Random and...

Caught a fly with chopsticks today...

Chengdu Lifestyle Magazine

Chinese Lantern Festival

After one festival ends another is just around the corner. This one being the Chinese Lantern Festival. It celebrates the first full moon of the lunar year.

There is a large park in Chengdu that is set up with large paper lantern sculptures. These are huge. Some even move. There are fair rides, candy and artisans who turn melted sugar into creative sculptures.

In the middle of the park is a large temple decorated with red lanterns and colourful lights. It was beautiful to see. Even if we couldn't see the moon through clouds.

On the way back we had to wait to find a cab. This is normal and something everyone has to get used to. It took us 30 minutes to get a cab. Sometimes it can take even longer.

Chinese Lunar New Year

After a great New Year's celebration in the bush it was time to celebrate another one in the East. Chinese New Year is marked by the first new moon of the year. On the Chinese calendar it falls on February 14th this year, marking the beginning of the year of the tiger.

Again, words cannot explain it. The celebrations run 15 days until the Chinese Lantern Festival marking the first full moon of the year. The city sleeps for 15 days. No honking horns. No playing Frogger to cross the street. Only loud and overwhelming fireworks every night with the largest on New Years eve.

These fireworks are not set up by the city or some professional, but rather sold on every street corner in orange tents lined with boxes of fireworks. We are used to individual fireworks that we buy on certain holidays. Now imagine a box, something the size of a microwave. Some even the size night table. You light this thing in the middle of the street and you get a professional looking fireworks show for 2 or 3 minutes. And that is just on one corner of an intersections in a city with many intersections. The sky was a sparkling sea of colour. The buildings echoed.

First Impression

Well, after some difficult good-byes at Mokuti it was off to Chengdu, China.

Our GM had friends from Munich visiting for NYE and they would be on the same flight back to Munich. That meant some company and some entertainment to shorten the 10 hour flight.

I stayed overnight in Munich to break up the flight and met up with friends to continue the fun into the evening. We were deep into beer and Schweinshaxe. Delicious!

The next day I made it on a flight to Chengdu over Beijing.

Chengdu is in the Southwest of China in Sichuan province. The city has a population of 15 million! The country of Namibia only 2.1 million. What was I getting myself into. There was definitely no scenery here.

And that is the first thing you notice. I was now in a city. Trucks, cars, mopeds and pedestrians whistled in and out of traffic to get where they needed to go. My driver's palm rested continuously on the centre of the steering wheel as his use of the horn was frequent. This was an aggressive place. Get in front or lose it all.

I made myself comfortable in my new quarters and was ready to see what this place had to offer. That meant dreary skies, no sun, fog, spitting people and more honking horns.