Hong Kong / Macau

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After our time on the Thai Islands it was back to Bangkok for a couple of days before flying out to Hong Kong. We arrived in Hong Kong on Monday (September 8th) and spent our 48 hours there exploring the city and looking for cheap electrical goods to add to our list of completely unnecessary gadgets for travelling. Our stop in Hong Kong was short and uneventful and, after two days, it was back to the airport and on to Beijing.

We arrived in Beijing mid-morning on Wednesday 10th. Our first stop was Tiananmen Square. Julie had read somewhere that there may be secret police patrolling the square and listening into conversations, so she had us on our best behaviour. The funniest part was when I left her on her own for 5 minutes and in that short space of time 4 people approached her and asked if they could have their photo taken with her. Julie being Julie kindly obliged with big smiles, although she was not quite so smiley when I suggested these people might have been her secret police building their very own profile on her. Julie has us move on from the square over to the Forbidden City pretty quickly after that!

On the second day we visited the Summer Palace, after which we moved on to the Hútóng’s in the Northern part of the city. The Hútóng’s are more traditional Chinese housing areas, although a lot of the buildings on the main roads have now been converted into snazzy cafe bars or boutique shops, much like what is happening to Bridgeton in Glasgow. Due to the limited space in the Hútóng’s, the vast majority of buildings are reliant on public toilets out in the streets. The standard of these toilets varied greatly, although my personal favourite was the row of 8 ‘squatters’ without even as much as a partition between them. That’s as far as I am going to go with this particular story in fear of offending!

On the third day in Beijing we visited the Great Wall and, in the words of Richard Nixon, “This is a great wall”. Unfortunately, however, the weather wasn’t so great and we weren’t able to see the wall in all its splendour. Never mind, despite the weather we still managed to make the most of it and Julie made sure we walked twice as far as I would have liked. Not only that, but Julie also got to try out her haggling skills again, this time at the restaurant beside the ticket office. I have never been to a restaurant before where you haggle over the prices. Admittedly, some of the starting prices where steeper than some parts of the Great Wall, and even at half these prices I think we were still being conned.

In the evening I demanded we visited the Silk Market, which is like a grander version of the Barra’s. Think of anything, and they can sell you something slightly like it; from Ted Barker suits to i-Pud mp3 players. I’d like to be able to say that I wasn’t daft enough to buy anything, but that would be a lie! I am now a huge fan of the not so well known, half Italian half Chinese designer, Giorgio Armini.

On our last day in Beijing Julie had us visit the Aquarium. The aquarium is pretty impressive and our visit was made even more worthwhile when we stumbled across a tank full of sharks. The very same sharks we used to have ourselves. Finally we have found out that they are called - Siamese Sharks and they do indeed grow to 4ft. Looks like we did the right thing getting rid of them after all!

So in summary China is rich in history, culture, and up and coming exclusive designers. But unfortunately there was no quad biking or animal trekking to report home about! Sorry.

From here it is down to Xi’an this evening on the overnight train to see the Terracotta warriors.

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