Down Under

Down under

Yes, we've now crossed into the southern hemisphere and landed in Adelaide, Australia. While Vaniah has been here before, this is my first time, actually its the first time I'm south of the equator.

But first things first, the last few days in Singapore were really quite relaxed. We spent some time foraging in various shopping centres trying to update our travelling wardrobe and going to our favourite foodstalls trying to find some of the foood that really impressed us last time around. While some were gone we're both quite happy to see that the stingray was still there and just as good and as was the fresh beatiful juicy fruit. Still makes my mouth water slightly thinking about it.

We also went to Sentosa since Vaniah was certain to have me swim with sharks in the shark tank, so I donned a wetsuit and all the other gear and went in. It was quite cool being in there with some amazing fish swimming around you, at one point a small Stingray (only about 1.5 meter between the tips) brushed by just over my head, obviously it thought my blond hair was interesting. After that we went down the beach for a while and went swimming in the sea to cool off, not that the water was cool, but it was a welcome change
to the 33 degrees on land, it was at least 3 degrees cooler.

But then we had to pack up and head to the airport for a short (6 hour) overnight flight to Adelaide. After getting virtually no sleep at all (after dinner it was 4 hours to landing, and breakfast service started 2 hours before landing, that leaves 2 hours to sleep) we were introduced to Australian border control. We had to ensure we had absolutely no biological life that could harm the precarious balance in Australia and there were several scans, checkpoints and stations to navigate. On the last hurdle, where they asked if we carried any
hiking boots we failed, and had to answer yes. The guy wrote a number down on our declaration form and we were wisked off to the special queue to the right, the longest of course, and had to dig out our boots. There was actually a special code for just this case, as the guy who was inspecting our luggage had one look at our form and said 'Hiking boots, eh?' straight away. He gave them to his colleague and told us to wait for a few minutes and when she reappeared they were cleaned - spotless. I am afraid to think about what they had done had they known I swam in a chinese stream less than 4 weeks ago, but nevertheless, we made it in!

And the first thing we saw as we got out on the other side was the Adelaide IKEA store. Felt just like coming home.

From the Airport there is a hotel drop off service bus available for a small fee, which we propmptly hopped on and just 20 minutes later we were deposited at our hostel. After a quick nap to get us both in a decent state we decided to do the Australian thing and head down the
beach -in this particular town Glenelg beach - which despite it being a Thursday was quite populated. After a quick late lunch of Kangaroo and crocodile meat for me and a Chicken Salad for Vaniah we got into our beach attire and charged into the waves. When I say charged though I really mean carefully and time consumingly gradually making our way deeper and deeper into the freezing cold water and were reminded instantly that we had left the tropics. Even though the air temperature resembles Singapore since Australia is having a heatwave presently, the water has some catching up to do.

Safely out of the water and warming up again it was very nice just lying there watching the Australians and the tourists play around on their surfboards, playing volleyball and
throwing frisbees while waist high in water. Quite a nice day to spend after a tiresome flight.

Next up wine tasting in the Barrossa valley..

Ps, if you are wondering why we are back to not having any pictures it is because the hostel we are staying at in Adelaide has the slowest internet connection I have seen this side of 1990. This makes it impossible even to read newspapers online, and we are quite far from being able to upload any images.

The Zoo

I was surprised to discover that after previously spending roughly 8 months in Singapore, my lovely husband had never been to the zoo here. Now, I'm not usually one for zoos as often you walk around the spartan cages and endure the sad-looking animals inside. This zoo however, is widely recognised as one of the best in the world and they use landscaping to separate the animals from us rather than using bars and this creates the illusion that you are up close and personal to the animals. So we remedied the oversight, and went to the zoo!



We choose a lovely day to go and the animals were out in full force. I particularly enjoyed the elephants show where they demonstrated some of the work that they used to do in the logging industry. They obviously liked their trainers (mahout) and joked around with them and the audience throughout the show.

The orangutans were everywhere, swinging on specially constructed vines over walkways where people were - no lack of stimulation in their lives!

The other animals seemed to fare just as well, see for yourself...












Night Safari
We decided to stay on into the evening and go to the night safari, a twin zoo to the main Singapore zoo which opened its doors at 7pm and closed well into the wee hours. The concept of the night safari was that so many animals sleep during the day and come alive at night when they hunt and feed and we never normally get the chance to observe them. So, why not have a zoo with that as the focus. Along with some random human entertainment (see right) we wandered along in the dark and saw large cats fishing in streams, giraffes eating, snow leopards. We were nearly knocked over by a flying fox swooping past, bats (shudder) and many other random animals.

Sadly no pictures though as it was 1. night and 2. no flash photography was allowed. Just a recommendation to go and enjoy it for yourself.

Singapore

Singapore is... well, Singapore really, and we're really happy to be here. Don't be fooled by all the Singaporeans and travel magazines that say that you don't need to spend more than 24 hours in Singapore, it's all a big scam to keep you away so that they can have this island all to themselves. In reality, its a warm, tropical, comfortable paradice with many little adventures to be had. It helps too that we are staying with my lovely cousin and he has been around to point out the good eating places and things to do while we are here.

The tailor
Of course the first thing that Johan wanted to do when we landed was to find his old tailor and get him to whip up some travel shorts for him for Australia. So he jumped into a cab and headed to the old address. When he got there, to his surprise, the tailor was gone. Disappointed we went to another establishment recommended by my cousin and after chatting for a while, discovered that his tailor had got into a fatal accident while driving on a highway in Malaysia. Yikes!

Durian
Neither of us have ever tasted the "King of Fruit" and as we've both had friends who have been trying to get us to taste this fruit for years, we decided that now was the time. For those of you who are wandering what all the fuss is about, you only need to get within a few metres of a durian to understand. To say that this fruit had an unpleasant odour would be an understatement of magnamous proportions. This fruit stinks! It is impossible to fully comprehend the stench of this fruit.

But we were determined not to let that matter stand between us and a potentially wonderful experience, as our durian-loving friends assure us of. Well, I have to report that neither Johan nor I were particularly impressed with it, though my cousin Jochum, whose flat we are camping out in, thought it was quite nice. It tasted of custard with a strong garlic aftertaste - very odd indeed.

Pandan bread
A new favourite, normal bread with flavouring from the pandan leaf which is delicious and for some reason, turns the bread a light green colour. A little disconcerting.

Singapore is warm and friendly and familiar to both of us and a great place to relax for a few days before our next big adventure

Sign of the day

Just so we're clear about this...

4 nights and 3 days

So, how do you spend three days in Hong Kong?

Did I hear someone say Shopping? Actually, I am pretty sure that had we been going back to Sweden tomorrow the bags would be slightly heavier. Sure we did think about shopping and shipping, but then by the time we get back, prices on all the gadgets (now, did anyone think we'd be buying other things than gadgets, seriously?) would have dropped to the level we're finding here. So shopping, apart from for souveniers we can bring is a memory is, unfortunately out.

But surely there must be a lot of other things on offer...

Kowloon walk
On tuesday we decided to go for a leisurely stroll through the area we are staying in, Mong Kok, in Kowloon - which is a very busy shopping area for camera, computer and various other electronics, and it was very tempting to start shopping. I must confess, just to get it out of my system, I did start haggling for some camera equipment, which was fun. But I digress.

Mong Kok reminded us a bit of Osaka, there are plenty of neon lights , though not even close to the Osaka Scenes of Bladerunner. Nevertheless there is plenty to explore for both neon and gadget junkies, but we pressed on southwards towards Tsim Sha Tsui, via Kowloon park.

Kowloon park is a rather odd little story, its a park on the second floor from street level, yes you have top walk up stairs to get to it and it sits on top of a row of shops. The park itself has no grass, apart from in the flamingo sanctuary but there were a lot of trees, pools and flowers, so it was a nice little break from the busy street one floor down. At the end of it you get to Tsim Sha Tsui proper which is another shopping area, this one teeming with people trying to sell you tailored shirts, suits and fake watches (they really did not do this false advertising thing - they actually were advertised as fake).
All in all walking through this part of Hong Kong is quite interesting, you pass through some shopping areas but also some smapper parks and squares where people are sitting playing chinese chess, reading the newspapers or playing with their kids. This is a quite different area from the financial centre that is Hong Kong island.

We continued our walk south to the Ferry terminal and took a boat acros, from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island, which is a really good and cheap (HKD 4.80) way to see the Hong Kong Skyline . We then decided that due to the mistiness of the day we wouldn't go to Victoria Peak as planned but we'd have dinner and take the ferry back after sunset to catch the night skyline. Even though it was a rather rough ride and limited visibility the view was quite stunning.

The happiest place on earth!!

The next day, wednesday, we took it quite easy, woke up late and had a leisurely breakfast and planned to go and see the great Buddha, after all we'd seen the largest Buddha in our previous countries so we had to see this one too, right? Well, in an uncharacteristic way Vaniah decided when we were one stop away from the place that we needed to change plans. Normally, this is my job and it is normally not that appreciated. The reason for this is that the station we were at was the interchange station for the Hong Kong Disneyland line.

So we got off and spent the rest of the day at the park which fully geared up for halloween so it was quite different. We watched the parades, one of which was a halloween inspired one with most of our friends dressed up in skeleton costumes, the cast of "A nightmare before Christmas" and various other monsters. In between those we were walking around looking at all the children run around with eyes wide open trying to decide which of all the fantastic things was the most fantastic and thereby worty of their precious time. The priorities were changing rather frequently and quite quickly.

We moved quite slowly and steadily and visited Tarzans treehouse, went for an aventure cruise, a trip to the small world, and into space mountain- twice and the haunted hotel among other things. All in all it was a very good day full of fun and truly different from the normal temple and statue diet we've been on, maybe aided by the fact that the Hong Kong park is a lot smaller and less busy than some of the major parks around the world (or so I am told). Once the final firework had popped in the quite amazing closing ceremony we joined the throng and headed back to the city and got ready for our final day.

Onwards and Upwards

The last real day in Hong Kong brought three missions

1. Dim sum - you can't really go to Hong Kong and Not have Dim sum
2. The escalator - Hong Kong has a famous long escalator that you get underground discounts if you go up, that had to be seen
3. Go up to Victoria Peak and see the fabulous view
   

The first mission was easily satisfied, with help from Lee on the other side of the world we found this great Dim Sum place in the city hall buildings. We got there just gone 11.30 and had a leisurly brunch lasting about an hour but when we left there was a queue outside that must have kept people waiting for at least an hour. Even if you get caught out, it is worth the wait.

After successfully completing mission #1 we started on #2.
This escalator is really a set of escalators and travelators that wind up the side of the mountain through residential, restaurant and bar areas on teh outskirts of the financial district. This area is probably best enjoyed at night, but we had made plans for the evening so it had to be during the day. We reached the top, a bit underwhelmed though this is not really a tourist attraction. But the walk down to the victoria peak tram, through the botanical gardens was very nice.



Then it was on to the top of Victoria Peak. The weather conditions were a bit better, though not perfect but still the views of Hong Kong island and Kowloon were just stunning. The trip up though is worth a mentioning of its own.... The tram was built in the late 1800's and kitted with a huge steam engine, though thankfully it has been modernised periodically, but the route is still the same. At its steepest parts it is an incline of about 45 degrees judging by buildings that we passed, and to think they built this over 100 years ago is quite amazing.

Once down we headed over to a bar where we'd arranged to meet Kyle, one of Vaniahs friends from her MBA that have scattered around the globe and settled in various interesting places. This bar, Red bar at IFC Mall, had a nice little terrace with a view of the Kowloon skyline and, of course, a well stocked bar. So we sat down for a good while, had a drink a good long chat and generally enjoyed the evening.

And with that, we are packing up and getting ready to leave Hong Kong and head out to our next stop, Singapore. Looking forward to it!

Hong Kong - Arrival

We took the train from Guilin to Shenzhen which was the first Special Administrative Region (or SAR) set up by the Chinese government to try out this free market thing in a safe area, so that they can find out what works with a Chinese culture before rolling it out to the rest of the vast country. We heard that the food in Shenzhen is great, combining the best of the south's cooking with a proliferation of restaurants but we wern't going there for the food, we were going for another thing that Shenzhen is famous for - the border crossing into Hong Kong.

Now, as all good British citizens learnt in school, Hong Kong was a British colony until very recently when it was handed back to China. But ask any Chinese or Hong Kong citizen and Hong Kong is a separate country with its own laws, money and immigration control which we dutifuly went through and exited to - a metro station! Trains from here would take us directly into Hong Kong proper.

Hong Kong is one huge city, but unlike big Chinese cities people seem to wait for others to get off the train before boarding, we spotted a queue at a bus stop and the traffic stops when the green man is showing. Our hostel too, was unlike any we encountered anywhere in China. For twice the price, we got a room that was half the size with a miniscule toilet/sink/shower unit. We followed the directions to get to the hostel which turned out (as do most hostels in HK) to be in a big building with several hostels on various floors. The lifts go to either odd or even numbers and once on a floor, you can only select to go down. Though if noone else has pressed a down button you can actually go straight up. So to get from the hostel reception on the 9th floor to our room on the 14th floor we had to go down to the ground floor, since someone on the 5th floor wanted to go down, then back up to the 15th floor and then walk down the stairs to the 14th. Still with me? We were quite amused by this process. But there are English channels on TV and every possible store within spitting distance of our building which will make it very easy to replace all the travel essentials that we've (well, only me) managed to lose along the way.

Over the next few days we intend to enjoy some of the pleasures that Hong Kong is famous for - the dim sum, the skyline and the shopping. If you've been here before, please send us recommendations of your favourite HK top tips and we'll try to include them in the few days that we have here.

Exit China

Leaving China

So, China has 1.3 billion people. Stop right there and think about it for a while.

That is 1,300,000,000 individuals, big or small running around. Yes, it is a huge country and a lot of people still live in the countryside, but there are still an enormous amount of people who live in the cities. Have a look at this table of population in major Chinese cities, and see the population for the 'administrative area'.

How many of these cities have a larger population than your country? (Ok, maybe not Britain and America, but you get the idea). How many of those cities have you even heard of? Think about it, there are cities out there with more people than you have in your entire country and you've never heard of it. Scary huh?

What this means is that when you are planning a trip to China and look up places to go, then every place that you can find information on is going to be huge. And if you find a place that is described as 'small' it is still likely to be a multi-million people city. As an example, look at Gulin and Yangshuo, described as rural an idyllic, they have a combined population of about 6 million, almost the same as Sweden and twice that of Jamaica. So of you want to go off the beaten track you really have to try, hard.

What we've learnt
On the environment
In practice, when you travel through China it means you are most likely to see scenes like these in the picture to the right. Most cities are big bustling places where traffic is mad, the 'mist' is quite dense and smell of diesel, you can expect to be pushed and showed if you are not moving fast enough and the soundtrack almost exclusively features car and moped signal horns. Most streets are lined with small shops selling cigarettes, mobile phones or fake bags and as Vaniah was ranting about a while back, everything is being rebuilt.

Cities are growing at a phenomenal rate here and every day hundreds of thousands of people are moving away from the countryside and into one of the cities. This is a good thing! The countryside isn't equipped for all these people and when in ten years time we return and want to escape to the countryside, then it will be there, because most of the people will have moved to the cities.

Also, even though the cities are now smoggy, China has set itself quite ambitious targets for environmental clean-up's and if the past is anything to go by, when China sets itself a target, it achieves it. We have hope that one day in the near future, the blue skies will re-emerge in all their glory!

On tourism
Priceless ancient sites that are not being rebuilt are hidden behind gated walls and deemed a national heritage site which then warrants charging you ridiculous prices to gain access. When you enter, you must pass through endless streams of tat-shops to get to the treasure which is sometimes obstructed by signs advertising photos with minority group people. And then there are the tourist traps like the Bund "sightseeing" tunnel which is clearly false advertising, designed to get you to spend money in the shops around it.

But think about this number: 95% of tourism in China is by Chinese people. If you take Wikipedia to be correct then in 2002, nearly 900 million Chinese people were tourists in their own country. What do you think will happen when the bans are lifted, the currency ties to the US dollar are dropped, and 900.000,000 Chinese tourists suddenly decide that they want to travel to Europe? Hmmm... maybe I'll start investing in the tourism industry...

On the things that make it worth it
If you do try, you can get to places like this.


Where you can see a vastly different China from the bustling city life, where water buffaloes are roaming the little village streets, chickens are running around in the rice fields and the local farmers are drying their produce on their doorsteps. Of course there are still people ushering you towards their family restaurants and shops, but they are few and far between and they seem more authentic.

Also, Shanghai is a little oasis for westerners where things seem to be a lot different (though right now Shanghai too is a construction site in preparation for the 2010 Expo), people are still rushing around but its not the same mad scramble as in other large cities.

And finally China has some absolutely fantastic sights that are a must see, the Great wall, the forbidden city, the temple of heaven, the terracotta warriors, the Li rice fields, the three gorges, the giant Buddha at Leshan, climbing Mt. Emei, Tibet (though it was closed when we were here), etc, etc.. We are quite sure you can spend an entire lifetime going around finding those gems, small and big and still not see them all.

On leaving
We think that we both are leaving China with a vastly different view of the country now than before we came, in many different areas. But most importantly, China is not as scary and difficult to travel through as we had initially thought. That doesn't mean that it has always been easy but it has been a fantastic four weeks.

Another good day

After such a wonderful day, it would be hard to get one better but this one tried.

Hiking in China
We woke up early (thanks roosters) and relaxed a bit again in the morning before feeling guilty for being so lazy so we decided to go for a hike. At the inn, they have several walks available for you to do so we picked the Top of the world plateau and got going. It was a great opportunity to get some exercise and see some slightly different countryside - close up.

There wasn't always a path there, but the views were breathtaking and all natural. The walk snaked up and through two of the karst mountains to an unexpected plateau and then down to a nearby river, around by some farms and then back into the village where the guesthouse was located. Fantastic!

Cooking in China
After all that walking we still got back in time for our driver to pick us up and take us to the Yangshuo local market for a tour around before we head off to our Chinese cooking class!

The market was a bit of a treat, there were so many vegetables and products that I didn't recognise and our guide was very helpful in pointing out and explaining what everything was.

We saw lotus roots, pickled cabbage, long white carrot-looking things that weren't parsnips. Not to mention a multitude of chinese greens of every discription. And some other meats that are probably unmentionable for this blog...

After the market tour, it was on to our cooking class which consisted of 5 different dishes in a small class of around 8 people. We donned our aprons, picked up our vicious looking cleavers and got to work.

We learned how to steam meat in our steam chicken dish, how to make make egg dumplings and how to stir fry using oyster sauce properly. We made stir fried pork and vegetables, spicy aubergine and stir fried greens.

Afterwards we sat outside on a terrace overlooking the river and the karst scenary and ate the good things that we had just cooked. What a fantastic experience.

So, after my rant, we have managed to have not one but two incredible days in China. It's always best to leave a place on a high and as we've been told several times by different people, Hong Kong isn't really China so technically we will be leaving China tomorrow and starting another adventure.

The perfect day - China

Yesterday was a very good day in China, probably our best since coming here. We woke up fairly early to the sound of roosters and the sun streaming in through the skylights - neither of which was going to damper my mood as 1. there were roosters and birds just outside and 2. the sun was shining through the blue skies and 3. there was no busy highway anywhere around. We were in the China that we came here looking for and had almost given up hope of finding.

The morning was spent relaxing in the hostel's hammocks and enjoying their wonderful, western style breakfasts but after a few hours we were itching to see more of the countryside so we rented a couple of bicycles and set off for the Dragon bridge. Along the way we bumped into a group of people that we had met in a hostel in Guilin and some others that had joined them along the way. We passed a Chinese lady who asked if we were going to Dragon bridge and when we said yes, she decided to become our defacto guide. Good thing too because it wasn't the easiest place to find so we appreciated her presence pointing the way at every junction.

The karst scenary was there in full glory as the backdrop for the rice and various vegetable fields and little villages. We stopped to rest by trickling streams, spotted chickens which had got loose in the rice fields, little children probably going home from school for lunch, water buffaloo having a swim, locals tending their fields and most importantly very few people around. We felt like we were having a genuine countryside experience, seeing how real farmers lived.

Once at the Dragon bridge - which is just a brick bridge which local rumour says that it was built by farmers several hundreds of years ago without the use of any cememt, our guide asked if we would like to go to her family restaurant for su fan which we think means lunch. It was lunch time and without any other reason to pick a different restaurant, we went along. Turns out that the dining tables and chairs are on bamboo rafts with little roofs on the river, tied to the restaurant. We tried the home-made rice wine as well as some meat, veg and tofu dishes all washed down with the local ice beer. Perfect.

After lunch, the others decided to keep cycling while Johan and I caught a bamboo raft back down the river, with our bicycles on the back. Again, the scenary along the river was beautiful and the ride was peaceful... until we came to one of the levees in the river which occured every 500m or so. The river seems to be terraced, like the rice fields, we're guessing that it's to help the farmers channel water through their fields when they need to flood them. What it meant for us was that each time we had to go over a little water slide in our bamboo raft - which was sometimes a little scary and always a little wet!

We got dropped off about 15 minutes cycle from the hostel so we made it back just before dark. Sitting down in the outside restaurant/beer garden, we shared a bottle of local flour liquour with an american guy we met and chatted politics and travel ideas and ate lemon chicken and rice. In all, a wonderful day.

Found it

And just after that little rant, we finally found exactly the China we were looing for.

As I am typing this we are sitting having breakfast in a lovely little hostel in a countryside village (yes a village - with almost no people - the first place we've been with less than 1'000'000 inhabitants). There are chickens, roosters and dogs running around my feet fighting for scraps, we can hear crickets and birds in the woods just outside and there is one of the trademark karst mountains that the Guilin region are famous for withing arms reach...

We are feeling the energy returning. This is exactly what we came here for, and the next few days we'll be doing a day trip or two into the countryside, look out for loads of pictures :).

And there are some more coming as well - yesterday we went to the Lijiang rice fields which is a huge area of terraced rice fields on the tops of hills/mountains a few hours north of Guilin.

The day started with a visit to a visit to a tiny village inhabited by a minority group, Yao Chinese, who take pride in their long hair. They are apparently only allowed to cut it once, when they are 18, and even then they are not allowed to throw that away. They put on huge shows for the tourists wher they wash their hair and comb it while dressed up in traditioal clothes. We opted to not go to the show, but sat down by the tiny little stream in the sunshine, dipping our feet in the water and watching the normal day-to-day ambling of the villagers and some of the Chinese tourists frolicking in the water Turns out that was a good decision, not only were we spared the touristy show but we saw a few of the girls that had the day off wash their hair in the stream and prepare the vegetables for lunch. So we got to relax, play in the water and see an informal 'show' and we were spared the majority of the shopkepers trying to sell us stuff, not bad at all...

After that we headed up to the summits, it was a 35 minute walk up a lot of steps (we love those by now, we really really do) winding through a village, touristy but I believe there is still a big part of it that are working the fields. Nevertheless, the views along the paths and from the top was quite stunning. In almost every direction there were terraces nestled around every small peak or hilltop and tiny paths winding through between them, and people out farming them. And fortunately the weather was defying the forecasts of rain and provided some sunsine through the cloudcover, but most importantly it did not rain.

After a few hours of snapping away with my camera we were heading back to Guilin and on towards Yanhshuo and the hostel for the night. We met this lovely Dutch couple on the bus who told us they were staing at this lovely hostel out in the countryside, which we had been eying up, but decided to not stay at, since the weather was going to be so bad and it is an outdoors kind of place. But with their assurance that we'd still like it better than the city if it rains and our doubt of the accuracy of the weather forecasts we changed our plans, arranged accomodation and made tracks for the countryside. We checked in to a massive room with two big beds, a table and some chairs, a huge ceiling fan and massive mosquito nets covering the beds and, most importantly, a truly great chef.... If you are ever in China, do not miss the outside-inn.

Today the plan is to take a walk by the river, or a bamboo raft down it or just sit here in the hammock and sway in the gentle breeze until it turns dark. Either way, we have found some peace.

China blues & greys

I am now officially all China'd out! If I never have to see one more pagoda, negotiate with one more taxi driver, eat one more dish with mystery meat, I will be happy. Of course I've picked totally the wrong place to get to this point as the city of Guilin is supposed to be known for it's beautiful karst scenary and laid back attitude but honestly, to me, it's just one more big Chinese city.

The Blues
Please allow me a moment to break from my usual cheery self and give you a real picture of China from the ground level.

1. Chinese people, as far as I can see, are obsessed with redefining themselves and becomming the big, powerful, superpower they should always have been. What this means in practice is that everywhere that we go there is evidence that anything that is old and interesting is being systematically ripped up or torn down to make way for skyrise apartments and office blocks.

If there is something that has had special significance then it is designated a tourist spot or scenic area of some rating (from 3A to 5A) and then they slap gates on it, charge you 40 RMB and it immediately becomes overrun with hundreds (sometimes thousands) of Chinese tourists. It then becomes a bit of a battle to see anything of worth.

2. Something like 94% of all tourism in China is by Chinese domestic tourists and what that means for the Western visitor is that they really aren't that interested in you. Sometimes it's good - some of the tat-shop keepers just ignore you because they can't be bothered to communicate with you and there are loads more tourists that speak their language that they can harass instead. But most times it's not so great - taxi drivers either hike up their price to ridiculous levels or refuse to take you or you pay your 40 RMB to enter a museum only to find that all the commentary is in Chinese.

3. It's easy to forget about trying not to offend the Chinese person next to you when their behaviour defys all of your own social norms. It seems to be a popular sport for Chinese people to push, shove and elbow everyone around them just to get ahead in the queue to get on the train even though everyone has a designated seat and there is plenty of time before the train leaves. People are constanty hacking and spitting everywhere, even right in front of where you are walking so you have to walk around their phlegm. And the noise, people find it acceptable to talk at the top of their voices to their friend who is sitting 1/2 metre away from them, or honk their horns costantly on the road. Not to mention the chaos when you are trying to cross the road, even on a pedestian crossing, when the green man is showing.

At first it's interesting, and you put up with it because you are trying to be culturally sensitive but when I lost my rag the other day with the taxi driver who wanted to charge us 30 RMB for a journey that was clearly worth half of that, you realise that you do have a limit. FYI, after the little outbreak he dropped his price to 20 RMB so maybe I'm on to something there...

4. Finally, I have become so cynical about the quality of anything that I would like to buy, be it in the tat-shops or markets or even authentic looking shops. I bought a "Kipling" daypack and Johan bought a "North Face" daypack in a market and they are both clearly knockoffs. While we were at one of the famous sites in Beijing we got invited to see an "exhibition of art student works" and then were invited to make purchases afterwards. We didn't buy anything and found out afterwards that it is a scam that they run in several famous sites and that the works of art aren't done by students but are prints that can be bought in the markets at a fraction of the price that they are asking for. Why are scams like that being run from places like the "Temple of heaven" or the "Forbidden palace"? How could the authorities permit that? Don't they know that it completely ruins any credibility that the site had? And when you find out that you've been swindled that it forever puts a dark cloud over your entire China experience?

Of course, several of the scenic spots and tourist designated sites are themselves fakes. He Fang Jie, the ancient street in Hangzhou was probably build less than 20 years ago, yet it is where you are directed to go to see Song dynasty houses. The entire site of Fengdu in this site is reputed to have a history of more than 2000 years however once there you discover that the site they take you to has been relocated from its original site to the other side of the river and further up the mountainside as the original Fengdu was covered by the waters of the Yangtze. And that the jade sanctuary is under construction and looks like a brand new hotel/spa complex...

What is truth? What do you believe?

It's not all gloom
I have to admit that it's not all gloom, and we have done and seen so many interesting things that we need to write them down here just to remember that we did them, that it was real.

Over the last few days we spent some time in Hangzhou which is a city only 1.5 hours away from Shanghai and a truely beautiful place, mainly because of the lake and designated scenic spot in the middle. We spent some time on a tourist boat travelling to the island in the middle of the lake. It was very peaceful and beautiful. Later we explored the "ancient" Song dynasty tat-shop street and were facinated by the Traditional Chinese Medicine museum which had captions in english.

Yesterday on our way to the airport to catch our flight that would take us from Shanghai to Guilin, we boarded one of the worlds fastest maglev train and got up to a speed of 431 km/h which was the fastest either Johan or myself had ever travelled on land. The trip to the airport only took 7.5 minutes!! Very cool.

Today, in Guilin, we went to see the famous Elephant trunk hill which turned out to be a little underwhelming, though it is still well worth a visit and it had a nice park attached to it. Tomorrow we are going to do a tour of some rice paddy fields so hopefully the weather won't be too bad (it's raining at the moment) and we will get to see some real Chinese countryside.

Please forgive my negative post, and be assured that we are having a great time overall, we have met some wonderful people, travellers as well as native Chinese and know that for every negative there are several positives that turn the experience around. I know that one day I will look back at this post and smile and nod, understanding with the full picture what a fabulous and blessed time that we had.

Chilling in Shanghai

So, we have been in Shanghai chillin' in my friends apartment and watching knock off DVD's... in English... for the last few day. It's been such a treat to sit still for a few days and not to think about moving on to the next fantastic place. For all you friends out there who think that travelling is one big holiday, think again, it's hard work to keep moving on and absorbing so many great things.

Shanghai is a great place to take a break, second maybe to a beach somewhere with cocktails and beautiful sunsets... ahhh... Shanghai is a big modern city which is pretty easy for us Westerners, the easiest city that I've come across so far. It's easier to cross the road, get tickets for the underground, get cabs, order food in restaurants... We even had a steak dinner the other night, and Johan tells me that it was very good!

Bund Sightseeing Tunnel
Not much sightseeing though... yesterday we decided to venture out to the infamous Bund of Shanghai . I didn't really know too much about the Bund until I read about it in the guidebook. Apparantly the Bund is the old colonial part of Shanghai which was built up by Europeans who came to settle and do business in Shanghai about 100 years ago - so not that old and it's all down by the river. We went down to the south side of the river to get a good view of the Bund then headed towards the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel to cross the river (click the link to see my review). What a waste of 40 RMB.

Top tip: Take a cab, boat, metro, walk across the river but don't do the tunnel! All it is is a ride in a pod under the river through a really lame lightshow. That's it.

Suzhou
Today we headed out of town to Suzhou, a town about 40 minutes (fast train) out of Shanghai. It was pretty nice, it felt much smaller than most of the other cities that we've been to. We spent some time in a garden called the Humble Administrators Garden. A very odd name for a beautiful garden which is also a Unesco protected site. It was a pretty cool garden with funky rock gardens, lots of water and little pagodas. I liked it.

Afterwards we we caught a little boat and rode through the canals. Our guide realised that he couldn't speak to us and give us the usual speal so he resorted to singing to us. It was a little surreal, but lovely.

Crusing, China style

The last few days have been a real rollercoaster as we decided to cruise down the Yangtze River foregoing the posh luxury cruises that most western tourists took and instead do it the way the locals did, via a "domestic" cruise. What an experience! But I'm rushing ahead a bit, lets start at the beginning.

Chongqing
The bus ride from Emei to Chongqing took 7 hours of mad Chinese driving and honking horns. Johan swears that there is a hidden language in the beeps of the horns, one beep means "hi, I'm here", two beeps means "hi, I'm going to do something stupid like overtake you on the wrong side" and one long beep means "hey! what on earth have you just done!", and stuff like that. Seven hours is a long time to be on a bus that's never silent...

Chongqing was the port town where we catch the boat that we will be staying on for the next three nights of our trip down the river. We had been warned by the travel agent that we should take some food so we found the local Carrefour supermarket. What an adventure! They sold live fish and all sorts of creatures I'd never seen before. Among the pot noodles and other stuff, we bought four oranges for 20 RMB which turned out to be the best oranges I'd ever tasted.

The Boat
We were travelling second class which means that we were in a room for four people, the other two turned out to be a lovely older Chinese couple. Bless them, they tried to communicate but I got the impression that they never really understood that we didn't understand a word that they said. The boat was... how can I say this... a bit basic... very thin mattresses and um.. a Chinese style loo in the bathroom which did not smell all that nice.

The first full day of the cruise was very misty/foggy and we could hardly see the shoreline. Our first stop along the way was Fengdu, which was supposed to be some kind of ghost city from the Tang dynasty (618 - 907). Turns out that the real Fengdu was one of the casualties of the three gorges dam so was relocated to the other side of the river and up the mountainside. The Fengdu that was there was built in 1994 complete with a ghost ride and an "ancient" jade temple which is currently under construction.

This was a real low point. We wondered what we were doing there.


The light breaks through
That night it rained and rained, the pitter patter on the window putting us to sleep and drowning out the snores of our Chinese companions. But the next day had us up bright and early and when we went to the sun deck to eat our breakfast, the sun was shining, the sky was a bright blue and all of a sudden we could see the mountains framing the river. A beautiful sight... this was the reason why we were there, and suddenly all the other 'inconveniences' did not matter that much.. .

We took a side trip up the little three gorges, going from boat to boat and seeing the incredible gorges as the river cut through. We saw the real ancient Bo coffins hid high on the cliff face where no one should have been able to reach. We met some of the other westerners on the boat, a group of British students who were studying at a Chinese university and a lovely British couple who were travelling for 15 months. We sat in the glorious sunshine and slapped on sunscreen and worked on our tans with the cool river wind in our faces. We went to dinner with the students in the restaurant on board and they ordered for us in Chinese and we spoke English together and had a very good meal.

The last day was just a beautiful but with a slightly earlier start (6am) and we did another side trip on some dragon boats followed by an unsteady pontoon-walk on the river, a walkway up the side of a gorge filled with yet more newly constructed sights and followed by Chinese theatre. A bit much for us at 7am but the others seemed to enjoy it. We left the boat with mixed feelings, the scenery was fantastic and we were glad to have had the opportunity to be there and a little wiser about ourselves and the people who live in this vast land that we are visiting.

To Shanghai
We stayed the night in Wuhan and then flew into Shanghai this morning. We're staying with Kevin, a friend from the MBA who lives in Shanghai. He took us out for dumplings to this little gem of a place and now we're sitting in the living room, overlooking the lights of Shanghai and watching movies (in English) on DVD. It's nice to be in a home again :)

Zen moments

Just been sitting here in a Starbucks drinking a coffee (Starbucks is exactly the same here) and Johan discovered that they provide free internet as well. After the 7hour bus ride to get to Chongqing this morning and the three day "domestic" cruise down the Yangtze river that we are about to embark on, it's good to have some familiar moments to re-group, re-ground and re-zen.

But before we go, if you are ever in Chongqing, two pieces of advice.
1. If you decide to eat at 'Hot-Pot romance', beware of the spice. The "mildly spicy" hot pot contained a kings ransom of chillies. And do use the sesame oil provided and order rice (which is not on the menu)
2. Shop at Carrefour, they have bread, dairy products and most importantly ... cereal. (all of 4 different varieties). For the adventurous, they also sell live fish!

Up the mountain and back

We've been out of reach of an Internet connection over the last couple of days because we decided to get a little adventurous and climb to the top of the sacred (if you're Buddhist) Mt. Emei. Apparently there is a great view from the top especially if you catch it at sunrise - however we wouldn't know, neither will anyone on the mountain this morning, the weather was very misty so you couldn't see more than a few meters in front of you. Anyway, I'm jumping ahead a bit...

Day 1
On Tuesday morning we got up bright and early and headed from the Teddy Bear hotel where all the foreigners stay, to the local bus station. Our adventure started when the bus driver almost dropped us off at the wrong stop too far up the mountain, thankfully Johan noticed and convinced him to drive us down again and drop us off at the correct stop. All to see the fabled "Pavilion of pure music" or Nuixin Pavilion as the locals call it (picture uploaded in our picasa China album). It came with a lovely rope bridge (my favourite) and a beautiful walk along the base of the mountain. But then the stairs started...

The first part of our ascent was to get to Wannian Si, a temple at 1000 meters and have lunch there, an easy 300 m higher up the mountain, and the place where the bus driver tried to drop us off. This section is quite crowded, mainly because it is not that steep or long, and there are little shops everywhere. After a 1.5 hour walk we reached it and once we had fended of the monkeys 'guarding' the temple (read: steal food and any unattended bags from tourists) we settled down for dinner in the monastery. From the vegetarian menu we chose spicy chicken and a pork dish.... Turns out chicken was really tofu and the pork was some other unknown vegetable - the monasteries do not serve meat...

Refreshed after a good lunch we set off to the next marker, Huayan Peak, where we knew there would be a place for us to sleep. The ascent to that temple was another 800 meters, fortunately we were spurred on by a pair of porters offering to carry us up the mountain for a small fee. They kept asking me if I needed them to carry me up the mountain, they seemed quite convinced of a sale, pity they didn't know just how stubborn I can be. In hind site, I probably owe them a debt of gratitude as the stretch that the followed us on was probably the most soul-destroying stretch of steps on the mountain. We (Johan) worked out that roughly 6 steps equated to 1 metre upwards so we took to counting the steps and stopping for a break every 10m. Turns out that he wasn't far off, and the counting does help you on as well.

We got to Huayan Peak, an isolated, deserted looking old monastery where Johan had to go searching for someone to speak with. After a few minutes, we found a woman and discovered that the sun would set at 7pm (in two hours time). Put off a bit by the more-basic-than-I-signed-up-for look and feel of the monastery, and the fact that we had at least 2 hours of sunlight left to walk, we decided to press on to the next peak, the Elephant Bathing pool, where travellers who we had spoken to the night before assured us that they had electric blankets. We got there in about an hour, ate some noodles and more tofu and settled down for the night.

Day 2
The other travellers staying at the Elephant Bathing pool must be very early risers because when we went to the restaurant for breakfast at 7am they had already finished serving! Thankfully there was another Chinese guy who wanted breakfast too so he found someone to open up and provide us with some nourishment to start the day. We ate the option that was given to us which included rice porridge (which for some reason was light purple) and a couple of different types of vegetables in sauces. For 6 CNY each, who am I to complain.

Getting going again was tough, every single muscle in my legs was having serious words with me about the sanity of continuing. This time the songs we used to sing in Sunday school as a child kept me going and soon we were in the same familiar slog. We were always being passed by porters or people who live on the mountain, sometimes with what looks like quite heaving loads on their back. I didn't mind so much paying 5 CNY for a bottle of water (it's 2 CNY at the bottom). What we didn't expect to pass was a group of donkeys, fully laden, coming down the hill!

Lunchtime found us at Taizi Ping (2540m) where the buses offload the cheaters who then catch the cable car to the top of the mountain. None of that for these intrepid travellers, we are doing this the hard way. On a side note, do not eat at Taizi Ping, buy one of the ubiquitous pot noodles from someone selling them and eat that instead. Words cannot describe how bad lunch was. Enough said.

The final push was to Woyun and the Golden Summit. To tell you the truth, the last bit went by in a bit of a blur of steps, steps and more steps. I've just been reading through this post and I don't think that it really conveys to you quite how many steps there were. Using our handy 6 steps per metre, I calculate that we climbed over 14,000 steps going up! That's the equivalent of over 700 floors or climbing to the top of the gherkin 17 times! And it doesn't include all the bits where you go down for 100m then you have to re-climb those metres later on.

The summit was a treat. Unlike the temple in Japan where you climbed and climbed and when you got to the top you just found another shrine that looked just like every other shrine, here your reward for reaching the top is a 10-headed statue-thing all in gold and an accompanying gold and silver temple. Lots of incense and even some monks finishing their pilgrimage here. Even though it was cloudy when we got there, and getting cloudier by the minute, nothing could take away the sense of achievement of reaching the top!

The original plan was to stay the night and watch the sun rise the next day however I had picked up a bit of a chill and the call of a warm shower and clean sheets was too strong so we caught the bus back to the Teddy Bear hotel and checked ourselves in for an extra night. So here we are, back at the hotel, warm, clean, fed and looking forward to our 7 hour bus ride to Chongqing tomorrow to hopefully hook up with a boat to take us down the Yantze river. We might be out of touch for a few more days as I doubt the boat will have internet! We do have a flight booked to Shanghai for next Tuesday so we will definately touch base then!