It's been a while, so here we are with a mammoth update of our 40 days and 40 nights in China.......
We left Vietnam behind us and were bid our final farewells by stoney-faced border officials. A brief walk through no-man's-land took us to China, and to our surprise we were greeted by friendly, smiling faces who were helpful too! Things continued to run smoothly and soon enough we were aboard a bus bound for Kunming, just 9 hours away. The scenery was spectacular as we passed lush green hills and terraced rice paddies and on through Chinese towns new and old. It was on this journey that I had my first encounter with a Chinese toilet. China is bestowed with the honour of inventing the first flushing toilet and has produced some very fine porcelain but neither were evident - I'll just say the words 'communal' and 'trough' and leave the rest to your imaginations!
Kunming is a modern, lively city, and, due to it's 2000m elevation, has a wonderful climate - just like a British summer's day (one without rain) and it was quite a novelty to sit still and not sweat. Our week in the city was easily filled with visits to the unusual stone forest, taking in the vibrant university area and enjoying strolls around Green Lake where local people gather to play chess, practice Tai Chi, sing folk music and play traditional Chinese instruments. Oh, and being extras in a Chinese TV series! I don't think it was quite our 15 minutes of fame, maybe not even 15 seconds, but it was great fun and we got paid for our 'work'- something I haven't done in a long time!
Coincidently, our friend Maurice (who we met earlier on our trip) is an actor on the same show. He now lives in Kunming and it was great to meet up with him again and hear his tales of his new life in China. Not so great was our room mate - staying in a dorm room for the first time during our trip, we encountered a very eccentric (read weird) American man who had been travelling for 14 years, taken too many class A drugs in his time and insisted on dowsing himself in talcum powder from head to toe before bed perfecting the Alice Cooper look!
An overnight train took us far away from him and to the beautiful Yangshuo where limestone karsts jut mysteriously from the river and land. We had a great time exploring the area on bicycles getting very lost (Derek blamed the map, I blamed Derek!). We also took the opportunity to rent electric mopeds, which I thought would be a perfect solution to traffic congestion and pollution at home and was all set to start importing them. Things soon changed when we rode them and discovered that the top speed was only 20mph, the battery only lasts 2 hours and they give up at the slightest hill, not ideal in Bristol! Nevertheless, we had great fun zipping around on them.
We spent an unusual night on a sleeper bus to Hong Kong. The seats of the bus had been replaced with beds which meant more sleep, but as the beds were designed for Orientals, we could barely move in the morning from being so squished all night! The bus journey was good preparation for our accommodation in Hong Kong, where the best we could afford was a windowless box with hardly enough room for our bags! Luckily HK had plenty to keep us busy, minimising our time in the box. We spent our days riding the rickety old trams, munching tasty Dim Sum and trying not to breathe in too much of the polluted air! We found little remaining influence from the relatively recent days of British rule except for driving on the left and sticking to the road rules (very unusual in Asia) and a pub where Derek managed to sniff out a pint of zider all the way from Taunton!
After a few days of heady, hazy HK we took a trip to the less crazy Macau, where the Portuguese influence is clear to see and makes for an unusual mix of culture, architecture and cuisine. Our days at the beach were foiled by an incoming typhoon, our evenings at the casinos were cancelled when we discovered the minimum bet was more than a day's budget and our afternoon at the races became a non-starter as we arrived 5 hours early (don't ask). Despite these setbacks, we had a great time in Macau, the highlight being the international fireworks festival which was not spoiled by the weather, was free and we managed to get there at the right time! Taiwan were the victors and totally blew their opponents, Portugal, out of the water. The fireworks, set to music, lighting up the sky over the South China Sea were amazing, like no others we'd ever seen.
Back in HK we squeezed ourselves into a slightly larger box with the luxury of a window and set about exploring more of HK and its islands. We finally made it to the races, a night time meet at Happy Valley, the most incredible race track I've seen, right in the heart of the city, surrounded by skyscrapers. I began well with winners in the first 4, but we blew our combined winnings on the last race and went home even. So our dreams of doing the rest of our trip in 5 star luxury were thwarted, but whilst in HK we did manage, with the help of the most helpful consulate official ever, to get our Russian visas and confirm the final leg of our trip would be made by train along the Trans Siberian route. This meant we could book our flights home - yes we are returning back to lovely Brizzle in November.
And on that bombshell, I'll hand you over to Delek to take you back to the mainland....
Dear Family and China plates,
The People's Republic claims to be "one country with many systems" and so when we left Hong Kong to head for Guangzhou we had to be stamped out of China before we could be stamped in to China again. Confused? We would be, especially after a long day trying to cross half of this huge nation and failing dismally by getting stuck in Guangzhou where it seemed that the entire population was preparing for the holiday week to celebrate the republic's 56th birthday. With no train or bus seats for a few days, we had the option of standing for 26 hours on a train or staying put in the place where our smogometer finally gave up. What a choker. We pleaded, we begged, we bleated pathetically to try and find a ray of light and a way out but the answers from the army of ticket clerks were always the same "No have" and no matter how hard we tried, we were unable to find a chink in their armour. So amidst cries of "flying is lying" and with our overland dream of making Europe from the Mekong Delta in tatters, we broke and booked the last two seats on a flight out to Hangzhou the next day.
Our brief stay in Guangzhou was long enough to just about see the charming small river island Shamian Dao where we spent the night amongst the colonial buildings and where we witnessed some mesmerising Tai Chi first thing in the morning.
Hangzhou is a popular destination for the Chinese at holiday time and the only room we could find was a YHA suite! Wrong and dear but we loved it. The summer seemed to end for us after one day of 90+ amongst the millions at the beautiful West Lake was followed by cold, rain, rubbesh. Aside from the crazy crowds (who all stared at us as if we were aliens - even after we took off our green masks) and Hangzhou's lovely lakey looks, there were a few food nightmares (including the lipnumbing chilli chicken pot where after some successful chopsticking I fished out a whole head complete with cone!), our questions about why all the babbers had huge holes in their rompers were answered by parents hoisting them above bins for their 1s and 2s (classy) and Helen was a non-Mandarin-speaking witness to a traffic accident which was not fatal and not easy.
We took a train to Shanghai, where the other half billion seemed to be enjoying their holidays in the rain. Everyone had an umbrella and they were all held at the perfect eye-poking level for your slightly taller visitor. Another mega modern metroplis, we had an enjoyable fleeting few days here on the Bund, crossing under the Huangpu river in the psychedelic tourist tunnel, watching eyewatering and graceful acrobatics, strolling through the atmospheric older town, meeting David Brent's slightly creepier twin brother and suffering some more dormitory hell where one night a young Brit reveller actually fell out of his bed and landed on Helen. He didn't even remember it the next day! Good tactics.
Suzhou was our next destination and much more peaceful. Lots of space, canals and gardens with ridiculous sounding names such as The Humble Administrator's, Master Of The Nets and The Lingering. The end of holidays still managed to prevent us from going where we wanted and so we ended up with an extra day spent at the quaint Venetian-looking village of Zhouzhuang and the last two seats (maybe they all said that) on a sleeper to Beijing in separate compartments. Helen got the three guys and I got the lovely family and so was forced to swap (maybe I should have offered) by my persuasive special friend. The beds all had screens on the wall with no headphones, so we all watched different channels and had a volume competition.
Our last week in China was spent in and around the capital of Beijing, where the Olympic Games of 2008 seem to matter more than anything else. New, new, new is the mission and if you live in a building constructed before 2000, it's time to move. Whilst we were here, the IOC approved three new events to make their debut in Beijing. Look out for the gleaming Phlegmdome, which is now under construction with a state-of-the-art spitpit to host the gobbing gala. Then there will be the synchronised push 'n' shove, likely to bring the hosts another 1-2-3 finish and, although the USA and Vietnam will have strong claims, freestyle louding looks like another gold for China. The smoking marathon was blocked on some dodgy health issue and not 'being in the Olympian spirit' or some such myopic balderdash.
After three days of pea soup, where we said pollution and they said fog, the Party decided to trial their new weather control system and from then on, the haze evaporated, the sky was put back on in a fetching shade of sky blue and the sun shone. Can the powers that be be that powerful? So we struggled to see Tiananmen Square, the vast and palatial no-longer Forbidden City and the serene Summer Palace before we hit the wall in perfect sunshine and just stared in awe at the wonder of it all. We got the last piece of our visa puzzle solved at the Mongolian Embassy and spent our last morning at the enchanting Temple Of Heaven watching the elder generation perform Tai Chi, singing, dancing, playing games and having plenty of fun.
Three boos: us for giving in so easily to fast food in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing (all that good work on noodles and rice dashed on a couple of McMuffins and hash browns to super size us); the Chinese for their neverending noisy bodily functions (pride of place to the Guangzhou romantic diner who stopped his sweet nothings over the table to lean to one side and let rip a pearler - we and another guy got the classroom giggles. Don't know what his Chinese whispers were, but by the time they reached us it sounded something like "more tea vicar?"); POLLUTION and our failure to see more of the countryside and less of the skyscrapers.
Three cheers: we hardly ever got up early enough to appreciate it, but the early morning tai-chiers and the culture they can't destroy was unforgettable; the adult playgrounds (the non-striptease variety obviously) with all sorts of colourful exercise options and always in perfect condition; the Shanghai acrobats - I'm still wincing!
We left to start our epic train trip home on Monday 17th (October!). Sorry this is so late but it seems the closer we get to the finish line, the less time we want to spend in Siberspace. Still, only one more to go now.
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