A fine Friday afternoon, all classes this week are officially over, what better time to sit down and write.
We have almost come to the end of my travels. As I recall we had just left Guangzhou on a three hour flight surrounded be Egyptians going home to Cairo, heading toward...


Bangkok!

We arrived pretty late, around 11:15, and so we had booked bungalows close to the airport where we stayed for the night. Compared to the hostels we had stayed at in Korea and China this was something else. We had a whole bungalow, which is pretty much like a small apartment, all to ourselves. Complete with the teachings of Buddha and a tv set. Sweet.
That night my foot started to itch pretty heavily....

As we woke up to catch a taxi to the town center I had to rush to the bathroom, wet a towel and put it on my ankle because the itch had gotten unbearable. It was around 6:30 when we woke up and could sleep no more so we just got dressed and headed straight for the town center. We took the sky train to the boat stop and from there a boat up the river closer to our hostel where we hoped to get rooms for the night. From the moment we arrived at the airport we were followed by holy men; when we exited the gate we were surrounded by monks in bright orange garments. There would always be at least one monk in every vehicle we traveled in.
On the boats they even had signs that said something like 'place for monks', and people would stand up and offer them their seats.

After some walking back and forth these new and unfamiliar streets in the blistering heat we finally found our hostel (which I highly recommend !), after having stopped for 30 minutes at a police box and asked for directions. They called all kinds of people on their cell phones and walkie-talkies, finally another police officer arrived on his motorbike, yelling at them that it was right next door! And so it was, we walked 20 meters up the street and saw the hostel sign....
During our long walk I got a weird sensation in my ankle where that damn blasted fly bit me so I started examining it as I sat down. I don't want to be too graphic but I now had two (soon turned into three) huge blisters that stood out probably 2-3 cm from my ankle, filled to the point of almost bursting with ... well yes. Anyway, I punctured them and drained the fluid, after which I applied hand sanitizer to the wound - thinking I had to put alcohol on it to clean it.... needless to say it burned pretty badly once I went back to the 30 degrees outside. It still hasn't quite healed.

Now, we flagged down a tuk tuk and after negotiating the price (cheapest way to travel ever) we zig zagged through the heavy traffic at record braking speeds to the Temple of Dawn (Wat Arun to the Thai people). A magnificent Buddhist temple, it consists of a big tower that you can climb up (with very steep stairs) and admire the view of the city, surrounded by four smaller towers.
The decorations and statues carved into the walls of the tower are amazing, with such small details, it was really worth it to make a trip down there to see it.
Having walked past the flower market and various other places in Bangkok what struck us the most was how colorful the city is. Everywhere you look you can see in your line of sight at least 10+ colors. Even the taxis don a bright pink color. Such a vibrant amazing city!

We went to see some other temples and ended up at the mall where we found a big market and lots of lady boys. Apparently this is very common in Thailand, something I was completely oblivious before my arrival. I wasn't too surprised at this, the real shock would come after dinner, as we were walking back through the market on our way home by sky train.
As I was walking, I quickly glanced to my right and had to do a double-take as I thought I had seen a strange looking tree. Looking back, instead of staring at the dark bark I was expecting, I met the eyes of a woman, begging in the street. Her face was so deformed I found myself gasping and as I recoiled back I felt my eyes water. My heart started to pound and I dragged Svanni into the nearest 7/11 where I reclined up against a wall and 'came down' from the shock. It might sound like I over-reacted but I have never seen anything like this before in my life, even though I have seen all kinds of medical deformities in books/tv before seeing it face to face is something completely different.
This woman's face appeared to have leaked downwards, almost as if it had been burnt horribly and was now drooping towards the ground, in short strands. It is impossible to describe but you could not make out eyes, nose or a mouth, just dark brown sausage-like strands hanging off her face.
I became horrified of seeing her again... and I guess the tears forced themselves to my eyes because my first thought was how horrible it must be to live like that.

On to the 25th of March.
After only two days in Bangkok I found myself thirsting for some more adventure. What had appealed to me the most about the whole trip was getting into Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. As I explained before we had been stripped of two out of those three options so I was eager to make the most of what little time we had left - in Cambodia.
Early in the morning we bought two tickets to Siem Riep and boarded the Playboy bus (it had the bunny on one of the windows) to the boarder. We scouted the waiting room for other foreigners to share a taxi/tuk tuk with once we got into Cambodia and saw one girl traveling alone. Getting off the bus at Aranyapnathet (and they say 'Eyjafjallajökull' is hard?) at the Thai/Cambodian border we quickly went over and asked her to join us on our journey.
And so it was that our party gained another member, Jessica - for that is her name - stayed with us throughout our travel in Cambodia. As I write she should be traveling somewhere in Thailand with her sister who she was going to meet after traveling a bit around Laos.

As soon as we stepped off the bus we were surrounded by an army of tuk tuk drivers, fighting to take us to the border. We stepped out of the crowd, picked up our bags and chose a nice elderly lady and asked her to take us to the border. What she did was drive us to a small three-walled shack with a sign that said 'Cambodia official Visa'. Now, this didn't look at all like a border or a Vise issuance place to me but we went inside anyway, were greeted by the few men there and filled out an application.
Handing over our passports we were then promptly asked for around 50 $ for the Visa, which is more than half the normal price. We argued for about 10-15 minutes and they used all kinds of ways to try to get us to pay, one of them kept yelling at us to go back to Bangkok then if we didn't want to pay, another kept picking up a small carpet knife, opening and closing it as he spoke and the third just got confused when I told him how much we were willing to pay and that he should be smart and just take the money ( a bit more than we were supposed to pay normally). The best part was when they handed us an old book about tourism in Cambodia and pointed to the price for the Visa. It clearly said 20$ but someone had written with a pen in front of it a small "1". We laughed so hard and thanked them for trying...

Not just because of this cheap trick, but just listening to what they were saying and looking at their body language it was obvious that they were lying - they kept talking about how this was different from a government issued Visa and so it was more expensive. We asked them in turn "well, don't you work for the government? You just said so before. Cause if you don't we don't want to do business with you."
They gave us the reply that is now famous in Thailand and Cambodia (we saw it on a couple of T-Shirts and also a hostel by that name) that yes, this was "same same, but different".
We laughed it off and told them we knew what was going on and maybe we should just get their names and report them to the police. I had had enough so I asked for our passports back and sharply said to the man who was telling our only other option was to go back to Thailand that then that is what we would do.

As I turned around I thought that maybe this wasn't the smartest thing to do, threaten and yell at these men as they might as well use that carpet knife at any moment and god knows what other weapons they were equipped with and discard our bodies behind the shack with all the other defiant tourists but I quickly shrugged the notion off. Although at that moment I noticed that my hands had been shaking as I yelled back at them that this is what we will pay and to give us the Visa.

I had no idea where we were supposed to go next as we were so ill prepared so I just went back inside the tuk tuk and apologized to Svanni and Jessica as I didn't know how we were supposed to get our Visas now but the lady took us straight to the real border this time. Phew!
We paid the 20$, got in and were greeted by three men with government 'badges' who took us on a free shuttle bus to the bus station. On the way one of them would not stop talking and laughing, telling us about how good tourism in Cambodia has become and how they have this job now to greet tourists and 'protect them' from scams. At the bus station we exchanged our money into riels because this nice man told us that you can't really use dollers or baht... funny, and I just read online that you can... well whatever. So we exchanged most of our money. (turns out you can use all three)

Now, it was getting dangerously close to seven p.m. and I had no intention to stay any longer at this border town of Poipet as I had read carefully about its notorious reputation online. The bus however, had stopped running until the afternoon on the next day so we would have to take a taxi. At this point the warning bells in my head started chiming vigorously - how convenient for the taxi driver - and almost drowned my thoughts when he went on to give us the price of the taxi. We started to bargain with him and he decided to give us a 2 dollar discount. Wow.
We told them we were going to go outside and check other taxis - this is when they became desperate and followed us, increasing the discount until they had started to ask how much we wanted to pay.
Now, its not normal to have to bargain with government officials about the price of a taxi, I thought, so I tried my best to shrug them off. We tried at least... They were stuck to us like glue, pleading to us to take the taxi as it was 'very dangerous' walking these streets and there were no other taxis because it was so late. Apparently scare tactics are very popular in these parts. Finally we found a taxi in the streets which took us to the city for less than half of what they had offered us.
I later found out that these men are running a tourist scam, sponsored by the government. It was quite the feeling, standing in the dark in the middle of the street in Poipet, known for nothing but gambling and brothels, having been advised not to stay there for any longer than necessary, with no means of getting away.

During the four hour drive into Siem Reap we got to know each other a bit better. Only a few minutes into the drive, lightning lit up the inside of the taxi. For the rest of the ride the lightnings turned the dark skies brilliantly white. 
Cambodia was bidding us welcome.

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For the riveting conclusion (I hope), tune in next week.

Still more adventures

Ok, lets try to wrap this thing up!
Last time I left you our heroes were on a train which would, after only 15 hours or so, take them to the big city:


Shanghai!

We had hardly arrived and stepped out of the Subway before we were approached by 3 lovely young Shanghai-ites who wanted to practice their English. Sally, Stephen and Sophia - yes I know, I was very confused as well when I heard their names but its apparently fairly common in China to have a western name. In this case they got them from their English teacher. We talked for a bit and we found out that they were going to a tea ceremony close by, right now there is an expo in Shanghai (you can see the mascot, "Haibao", his name made out of the kanji for 'person', everywhere you go) with the slogan "better city, better life" and so many cultural events are being held all over the city.
 We decided to join them and so marched with all our belongings (very meager compared to all other backpackers we met) and went into this small tea ceremony room where a Chinese lady gave us five different kinds to try and our new friends translated for us the history of each tea and the story behind their names. At one point she picked up a small yarn-like ball, put it in the glass and told us to watch carefully. Before long, it started to open up before our eyes, revealing first a small white flower and then a few seconds later a long stemmed yellow flower burst out from the white one and stretched all the way to the top of the glass. Very pretty.
When we left they gave us two each as a souvenir.

We found our hostel, checked in and hit the streets. I quickly fell in love with Shanghai with its tall buildings, each more magnificent than the next. It is really such a multicultural city, walking around I saw more foreigners than in all my time in Japan. The sun shone, people did Tai Chi in the parks, played hacky sack, lounged around on the grass talking and eating and just seemed so darn happy!
We went to the Bundt district which has some very tall, modern buildings, planned to go to the tallest tower but it was incredibly expensive so all such plans were canceled.

The next day we switched hostels because of springy mattresses and found a better one, albeit a bit far from the center. That day Svanni had a bit of a misunderstanding with the washing machine, apparently there was toilet paper in one of the pockets of the clothes she was washing so they were now all completely covered in little snippets of paper. Unfortunately for me, I had put my shirt in there with her clothes so it stayed half-white until we got back home to Japan.
Donning her now only set of clothes, Svanni went to the mall and bought a new shirt. I must say I was impressed with the destructive power of toilet paper and will be careful in the future not to recreate this little mistake.

The 19th we woke up early and went to the train station. With the help of some more of Shanghai's youth we bought tickets to Guangzhou in the south of China - we would be leaving Sunday as all other tickets were sold out. This meant two more days in Shanghai.
That day we went to see Longhua temple - of course it was being renovated like every other sightseeing spot of the trip! Because of this though the admission was very cheap - 10 yuan - so we happily jumped between overturned pieces of cement (apparently they were re-doing the whole floor of the grounds) and climbing into the many halls of the temple. One of the most beautiful I have visited.
Next on our schedule was an old catholic catheral - Xijiahuí cathedral - and guess what? It was under renovation so you could barely bask in its splendor outside so we ventured inside after being given a green light by one of the construction workers. Surprisingly though he sent the Chinese couple behind us away, maybe he let us in because we were foreigners.. I don't know. But anyhow we had the whole cathedral to ourselves, which pleased me to no end.
That evening we had dined on tasty Chinese dumplings and noodles at a local restaurant.

The 20th of March we bought tickets to see the circus! As I have never been to the circus before, the rest of the day I was beside myself with excitement. In the meantime we went on a very short tour bus ride, where the nice woman gave us murky water to drink and barked information in Chinese. Since when were tour buses all about the locals? After some general walking around and looking for pants that fit (by this time my only jeans had been ripped almost to shreds) we went to the circus where I was completely mesmerized. One day I will run away from my life and join the circus, I'm sure....

Our last day in Shanghai we went to the Science Museum where we saw animals from all over the world, survived an earthquake, became scientists for a day and had some fun with the interactive part of the museum. The space and robot section was pretty lame though, I was hoping for a glimpse into the future of technology but only got ancient robots and a laughable and confusing dance performance by those robot arms that are used to make cars. After having killed some time we rushed to the train station. Somehow we almost missed the train, we had to run through the station and jump on board five minutes before it took off. The trains in China are serious and wait for no one...

Same as last time we got some cozy top bunks and took to discussing all possible ways to continue our travels. Should we take a bus from Guangzhou to Laos? Cambodia? Vietnam is out of the question, how about flights to Bangkok? Ponder, ponder.... Wish we could have made it to Tibet and Nepal...
Such conversations, sitting in a tiny seat in an impossibly narrow corridor, traveling in a rickety train to somewhere I have never been before, not knowing where I'll be staying the next night or even where I'm going or how I'll be getting there... such are moments of complete bliss beyond words. This I wrote down in my travel book, staring out the window into the darkness outside, thinking of all I had already seen, wondering what the future had in store.

Finally, we have arrived into the heat. A bit further south, all the way to:

Guangzhou!

I don't have all too much to say about Guangzhou, we were situated in a very quiet location, on a street that promised lots but offered so little. Neon signs, empty houses, other buildings that looked like restaurants/clubs/interesting places but were .. well I don't really know what kind of service they provided. Everything was completely empty until the evening. We spent a lot of time walking around, seeing nothing much really, exploring alleyways and taking a boat trip over to the other side of a big river that runs through the city, although there was not much to see there either...
One of the highlights of the day was walking through a park where we sat down and listened to a man and a woman singing traditional Chinese theater songs in a big gazebo by the river. We took a much needed break and sat down, listening to some sweet tones. Its pretty shrill but still very entertaining.

That day we ate nothing but noodles and come dinnertime, we finally found a restaurant and tried to make ourselves understandable with sign language and simple kanji drawings (tried to draw the kanji for "beef/cow") and finally just asked them to bring something they wanted to. We had asked for rice or beef but were told there was none but a few minutes later we saw a waitress walk past with 6 bowls full of rice and a huge bowl of beef for the next table. Maybe its a foreigner thing...
People still said hi to me on the streets - you would think they never get any foreigners in China.


The next day we took a taxi to the airport and said goodbye to China. It felt a bit strange after having spent so much time there but it was time to move on. Next up: Thailand!


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Oh no, the time has run away from me yet again. I have homework to do so I'm going to be a good student and go study. You will have to wait a bit more for the next segment!

Besos y abrazos!

Burning my tongue on some Jasmine tea I come to you again, with part II of my travel log.
If I remember correctly, we are still in ....


China!

After Beijing we really had no plans where to go next, we were going to visit our teacher in Changchun but as it was just a few degrees too cold we decided to take the first train down a bit further south to Xi'an. In our blissful innocent state of not knowing how things are done in China we ordered two tickets for hard seats, thinking they were the same as normal seats on a bus and we could get some sleep as the ride took about 13 hours. When we entered the train our dreams of our own seats and some sleep were roughly taken away. We had to fight to get in and to our seats, which were basically at the end of a small bench, facing another three seat bench so privacy was out of the question. Looking around all you could see was Chinese people carrying incredibly big packs filled with god knows what, chatting loudly and standing in the hallway as many of them didn't even have seats. All of them were of course very interested in the foreigners and I got a lot of long stares followed by whispering and chuckling. Somehow the 13 plus hours passed but there was not a lot of sleeping done on our part.

Xi'an. Stepping out of the train station we had to fight our way through throngs of taxi drivers eager to take us to hotels or hostels around the town. At this point I was very happy to have learned to say "no thanks, not needed" because if you say it in Chinese they will quickly go away and leave you alone.
We escaped into a five star hotel where we got a map and asked for directions to our hostel. We hopped on a bus, which costs 1 yuan (18 ISK), found our hostel which turned out to be one of the coolest hostels I have ever stayed at. Such nice atmosphere, amazing people, good food and cheap rooms!
I still wish I could pop over from time to time and hang out there.

Our first day of sightseeing we walked around the shopping district and the Muslim quarter. Such a lively place, narrow streets lined with market stalls, shopkeepers tossing noodles in the air, the smell of roasting nuts filling the air and in the heart you find the big Mosque.
We also made our way to the Big Goose Pagoda, with its massive square of joy and happiness; it was filled with people strolling around and children flying kites, I could have spent the whole day there.
But the tour must go on, we had an early start the following morning as we had booked a trip to go see the Terracotta warriors.

This must have been on the 15th of March. We woke up at nine a.m. and joined the small group of people going to see the warriors. The bus ride took about 2 hours so we got to know each other on the way. There were backpackers from England, America and Canada. One of them, Dave, had been traveling around China for some time and told me tales of jobs teaching English in S-America, I spent the rest of the trip dreaming.... 
Apart from it being a huge tourist trap, the tour was nice, the old farmer who discovered the warriors was now being kept at the museum, signing autographs. He had become something of a mini-celebrity, but I just felt sorry for him. They had turned his land into a museum and forced him into retirement. Actually, he was not the first to unearth these warriors, other farmers had found them earlier but thought it was a bad omen so they just put them back and stayed silent.
Lucky them....

Our last day in Xi'an we spent buying train tickets to Shanghai as it had been recommended to us by some of the backpackers, walking around the city, hanging out at Starbucks and playing games at the hostel. That night they had an open mic night and we enjoyed some wonderful tones from the guests.

17th of March and we were on our way to Shanghai! This time we were prepared and got hard sleeper seats. A bit more expensive but we got bumped up from 4th class (hard seats) to 2nd. Our bunks were on the top, so close to the ceiling that you couldn't sit up straight, you had to lie down or suffer a massive sore neck. We soon fled our bunks and spent the evening in the dining cart, facing the window, enjoying the great view of the Chinese countryside. In the morning we returned but were told we needed to buy something to stay there. We asked for some tea and the woman handed it to us and sat down next to me and began a one-sided staring contest with me. We ended up talking in a mixture of English and Chinese (teaching each other Chinese and Icelandic as well) but mainly using a lot of  gestures. We took some pictures before leaving and I gave them some green tea. Instead I received some Jasmine tea, which I am enjoying as I type.

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It's Sunday and it's getting late, I have class early tomorrow so I must stop now and retire to my bed. More on our travels soon, next week will be hectic as it is the first 'real' week of school of this new semester but it should be good.

Until next time!

The beginning...

A few days after my return to the I-House, and about time I started writing about my travels.
I'll try to go over this quickly, for my sake and yours. :P
Let's start with.....

South Korea!

At first this was supposed to be a trip to South-Korea only, the idea was to head over to the land of cheap things to spend some money and live like queens but soon our imagination started taking us further and further, down through China, into Tibet, perhaps Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Sadly fate would not have it so, we found ourselves begging for more time (at least myself) and visas. But more on that later.

Early on the 4th or 5th of March (didn't write it down...) me and Svanni boarded the Panstar ferry which took us over to Busan, Korea. After some walking around town and almost going swimming with the sharks at the aquarium we hopped on the next train to Seoul.
On the way we saw millions of red crosses scattered around the cities and towns, at first we thought they were pharmacies but apparently they are very religious down there. The people are also somewhat different from the Japanese; much more playful, open and loud. Seoul is a lot like any other big city, a bit more messy and dirty and some of the streets are rather run down.
Some of the things we went to see were the fish market, Jongmyo royal ancestral shrine, markets where we ate some of the local delicacies, seoul N-Tower, we rode a cable car, went to the roots of a nearby popular mountain route.... Svanni wasn't sleeping so well so she kept falling over a lot and once managed to scare some people on the street by falling and running into them. They clutched their purses while I laughed like a maniac. The 8th of March we moved over to China.


China!
 
The flight over to Beijing took about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Check-in was postponed for a few minutes due to ... snow! I stood there in jeans, autumn jacket and sneakers, refusing to believe my ears. Actually it was minus 6 degrees when we landed and snow was scattered on the ground.
We left the airport and tried to find a bus downtown, but all that the bus boys would do was shout at us in Chinese and point in random directions. Finally we got some answers and hurried onto one of the buses. During the ride the driver would yell at the top of his lungs, I still don't know what for, at one point we stopped talking because we thought he was telling us to shut up.
At one point he stopped the bus, stood up and yelled some more, this time with more fervor. The people on the bus started yelling as well and started getting off the bus. I didn't want to spend any more time in a closed space with this man so we hurried off the bus as well.

Getting off the bus, we were now completely lost in the middle of Beijing, surrounded by armed guards and police officers. Luckily I noticed a building close by that I recognized so I dragged Svanni over there. When we stopped again I realized we were standing right next to Tiananmen square!
Feeling like a kid in a candy store I ran wildly around, not knowing which site to explore first.
As it was freezing we decided to go find our hostel and then come back later.

As it turned out, our hostel was in a pretty run-down part of town (this would follow us throughout our travels), or at least it looked like that to us, coming from Japan. Actually its a long bustling street with crazy traffic and romantic alleyways. Due to our amazing Chinese skills we finally found the street and took one of the narrow alleyways to find a carpeted door (to keep the cold out) into the Lotus Hostel. We asked about visa for Tibet with high hopes but they told us it could take up to a month because of the meeting of China's officials in Beijing at the time. So we quickly pushed any notion of getting there out of our heads, sadly.
The hostel was nice, we shared a room with two Chinese guys, one of whom spoke flawless English with a British accent. It was good to have someone to talk to - English is apparently not high on their agenda of stuff to learn.

Among other things we went to visit the Forbidden City - a seemingly endless array of halls, the Opera where we got to know the Monkey King a bit better, the Great Wall of China where we climbed the almost vertical steps and slopes up and down, Temple of Heaven - closed, some nice restaurants (we skipped the pigs tail, chicken claws and cartilages...), Summer Palace - it was a frighteningly cold day, Lama palace - beautiful temple, and more.

Actually, when we were going to the Great Wall we were greeted by lots of people trying to sell us tickets for a 'low, low price' - only about 4 times what we thought it was supposed to cost. One of them would not leave us alone, I told his it was outrageously expensive, he told me in turn that there were no buses running that day and this was the only way. His mistake was stopping a young couple to do some translating for him as his English was not so good; the woman obviously felt bad about repeating what he was saying so I looked to the guy who beckoned us to follow him. We did and they helped us find a bus to get there. To show how incredibly nice and helpful the Chinese can be we had six people standing around us at one point, discussing how it would be best to get there. After a few minutes a man passing by overheard their conversation and told us to follow him - he was going the same way.
We sat down and bought tickets - after thanking them - they cost us only a few yuan...

When visiting Tiananmen square our last day in Beijing we were touristing around, minding our own business, when this woman taps me on the shoulder and yells something in Chinese. I though I had dropped something and quickly turn around. She then grabs my arm and points forward, there is a another woman standing there, pointing a camera at us. Understanding, I smiled and turned to keep going. Then I get another hard tap on my shoulder and this woman is smiling at me and speaking Chinese, touching my hair and saying how tall I was. A very weird day indeed.

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I think I will stop here for now, lets do this in small doses.
To be continued....

Good day, fine readers.

I am finally back from my travels (since of April 3rd) and have a lot to share with you. The wonders I saw, what I discovered etc. It is a daunting task and so you will have to be patient with me while I write down the highlights.

Not to leave you empty handed I thought I would write about one of the wonders of Japan, the Sakura trees! I came back just in time to see them blossom, I was getting worried that I would miss them as they blossom sometime in March/April, only to wither a few weeks later.

There is no easy way for me to accurately describe how the Sakura have transformed Kyoto. The city was beautiful before but now, taking a stroll down Kamogawa river feels like being in a dreamlike state, walking in the palace of the gods. Sounds overly dramatic but this is truly the feeling I get, I described them yesterday like the clouds had split up into small pieces and sat down on the branches.


Walking with Hanne the other day down Philosopher's walk (crowded with people enjoying the flowers) I made up a story of how when the trees were all picking colors to wear they all wanted to look their best so they competed at picking more vibrant, beautiful colors. When they found that the Sakura had picked plain white with only a tiny red dot in the middle of the flower they mocked it for its ridiculous choice. How the people would laugh and scorn the Sakura trees come spring when they would don their simple white dress. They would do nothing for the landscape with their drab foliage, scoffed the other trees, having chosen radiant red, vibrant green, brilliant yellow and so on.

The poor Sakura trees were so ashamed with their choice after all this scorning and laughing that they, in their humility, decided to only bloom for two weeks every year, to let their petals scatter like white tears before they would even see summer.
Today they are the most beloved of trees, transforming their surroundings into a state of white paradise, having people come over from all over the world to witness their blossoming.

Happy spring!