My trip to China / The prequel

Dear Steemians,

Today marks the beginning of a series of blogs regarding a trip in China I had the opportunity to make last year.

The idea emerged in my mind on December, 7th 2016 during a walk. I was thinking for months about going in a foreign country.

On that day, the idea to go to China appeared to be a logical step to me. Indeed, I read a lot of bookgs about the Shaolin principles and wanted to visit a monastry in Luoyang.

The only point was how to fullfil this projet in order to make it possible.

The following days I check different blogs from travellers who already went to China and are providing some valuable advices.

To me it was important that there was a smooth and well-thought preparation for this journey. China is fascinating and special at the same time due to its culture, language, way of living and so on.

So one of the aspect was to consider what type of travel would be appropriate. Considering the well-known fact that most of the Chinese do not speak any foreign language and that there are no signs written in other languages it would have been very challenging to get there as an individual traveller, however due to lack of time to learn the chinese language another form was more appropriate.

So I opted to travel in an organized way and went up to the travel agency to find a route that would include the Shaolin Monastry of Luoyang which is mentioned in books and is also visible in a lot of Kung Fu movies. To me the Shaolin is not about the martial art but more of the approach of life (more about that in a later post)

As I never got to a travel agency, I was surpised to endeavour how long it can last to find a travel and prepare the surrounding necessities such as the ticket, the administrative documents, the travel documents and more. All in all I must have spent 5 hours for the overall request such as finding the ideal tour, knowing if an option for a flight could be confirmed, make the partial payment upon confirmation of the flight, manage visa issues for China, issue flight and hotel tickets plus bus, train for the domestic journey and the final document. However, it was worth for what I would enjoy and live.

I still had to wait 4 months prior departure and was excited for the first trip since I began my professional career.

To end this part two questions to my dear audience:

• What are the specifities of Chinese Visa documents?
• Which recommendation do you have to follow in order to make the trip there? Be it in terms of health, behavior on the spot and so on.

Subsidiary question:

• Do you recognize the monument on the picture?

In the next blog I will tell you about the waiting time and the journey to China which was eventful to say the least.

Stay tuned and enjoy the day (I hope it is sunny and nice wherever you are)

Best regards

@joel0101