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Hey folks.
So the epic journey of China begins
Must admit i was a little worried about China, language barrier, dog and all.
So we crossed the border with no issues into China
apart from the China Immigration giving me the Spanish Inquistion over whether i was here for business or tourism, well kinda of hard to do business with a backpack mate! . The first thing we noticed was the weather changed dramatically. It was raining and much cooler
London weather came back to bite us. Im talking around 20 odd degrees. I know you guys must be thinking "haha" but we welcomed the temp drop. It felt good not having to change your clothes 3 times a day and have 5 showers. No sweating and no more dying in the heat!
No more going dark, no more being fried, no more stupid suncream!!! Our first stop was Guangzhou. A massive city and quite frankly we were really dissapointed. There was nothing to do and the rain prevented us from aimlessly wondering the city. It was pouring (and after we left the river burst its banks and the city flooded...phew). We hit a few spots like
Shamian Island which is supposed to be like Covent Garden with all the perfomers but again due to the rain they had scarpered.
It was nothing like Covent Garden, it was so boring. We wondered down Qing Ping market, supposidly the most notorious market in China as they sell everything from monkeys to snakes to dogs and cats for FOOD!
The snakes freaked me out, did not see them and then suddenly there they were in a basket sliced in half, length ways and their heads still on. My legs were like jelly for 10minutes. We managed to see loads of cats and rabbits and turtles and DOGS. Cute little puppies disguised as pets but in reality they were for somebodies dinner. I even saw my beloved Huskey puppy. To think he would end up on someones dinner plate....not nice!
He was guaranteed to end up in someones dinner, apparently Huskies are good meat! Disgusting if you ask me! So our impressions of China weren't great. The staring is too funny. Everyone stares at us like we are some sort of alien here to take over the world
my dear you are . Taking pictures, running up to us
invading our private space just so that they can get a closer look. Kay hates it but I kind of like it, makes me feel like a VIP!
Seriously i don't think celebrities get this much, i mean these people do complete 360 degrees to get a look, and if they aint looking at the chesy region it is the backside...i mean come on! This was officially the first time i have ever felt like i was in a meat market on a hook. The next thing you notice is the spitting. Everyone spits. Inside, outside, it doesnt matter where you are, they will draw up as much gunk as they can and out it comes. The best is when you see the prettiest most delicate flower of a "lady" and she hawks up a giant loogey! Amazing!
It comes from deep within and flies like 25metres, i think the Chinese invented it as another Olympic sport. And the third thing is the language barrier. Its amazing. We find it so difficult to get our point across to almost anyone. No matter how clear your sign language is, they just look at you like (again) your from another planet.
Funniest had to be when Jit and I where trying to ask the train conductor-guy-person, what time we were arriving in Chengdu. We showed him Chengdu spelt in Chinese from our lonely planet, and then pointed to Jit's watch...well this was obviously not enough as he got out his watch and told us the time was wrong on Jit's watch! Its funny but gets very annoying when your trying to book train tickets or worse, ordering food. Hardly any menu's are in English, so a lot of the time we just take wild stabs at what we should have for dinner, and touch wood we have had some of the most amazing food. But this usually involves making chicken actions and sounds or piggie noises to make them understand what type of food you want.
I let Jit do all this, i just get the Point-It book (picture dictionary) out and point! We said our farewell and headed for Yangshuo. We arrived at 6 in the morning on our overnight sleeper bus. Tired and confused we tried to find out if we were there. We had heard about a scam where the buses drop you off a few miles
out of town and make you get an expensive taxi into town, so we were a little weary but after the nice lady on the bus let us use her phone (again after 15 different attemps to singal we needed a phone - but the usual sign for phone - putting up a thumb and forefinger doesn't seem to work, in Chinese it means 6. So she's probably thinking....6? 6 of what you retards!!!) we got in touch with our hotel and the great "Stephen" came to pick us up.
This guy runs the hostel with his wife Lily, and were one of the great reasons we loved it here. Finally we were in a place where people spoke a little English. Some even spoke it to great conversational level. We rested up and woke up to a great surprise. As we arrived by dark we couldnt see what amazing surrounding would present themselves to us when we woke. The place is paradise. I mean seriously guys you have never seen anything like it. Massive cliffs/mountains as far as the eye can see and in the middle of it all the tiny town of Yangshuo.
I mean where we got off from the bus, amongst all the darkneess was lurking this massive backdrop of limestone karsts. Out of this world!
We set ourselves up for a busy few days. Boat trips down the amazing river, caving with mud baths and hot springs, bike rides and cormarat fishing. The river cruise was great with outstanding views.
It was cool because we ended up making images out of the karsts like you do with clouds, we got elephants, lions... And the end of the tour we even got a glipse up close of the locals chopping a dog into little pieces. Nice. The locals say Dog is a speciality and is very hot on the soul, so is really only eaten in winter. Also the best dog is to be eaten at 1 years old as they taste the best....hmm! But it did put the myth of getting dog by accident to bed as there is no way they will serve it to you as its quite expensive.
This dog in particular had one paw in the basket all ready and they were just about to hack off another one...Vicky i am sorry you are reading this! We cycled around
the cliffs and limestone formations to the water cave.
Jit took hsa 5km in the wrong direction first, which was downhill and uphill after the u-turn It had to be one of the best caves we have ever seen but we had to cut the exploration short as my flip flops decided to fall apart and walking on jagged rocks is painful for my delicate feet!!!
He has been such a baby though this trip with his delicate fingers and toes getting rugged from travelling...he is now a man! We instead headed straight for the mud bath. Its the wierdest feeling. Ice cold mud, all over your body. And the wierd thing is that you cant sink. No matter how hard you try, you float...the wierdest feeling. It did leave our skin feeling silky soft
back to a baby. We washed off after a hord of Chinese tourists were facinated at the fact that Kay was in a bikini. Most Chinese cover themselves with full swinsuits, so Kay was a little skankily clad. They came running over taking pics and laughing. Again, VIP's people!
This was definitely not VIP this was pervertion! We had just got out of the mud baths, i cannot cover myself up as the towel and clothes would get covered to with mud, so at this very moment a huge tour group turned up. The funniest thing was this one guy running and shoving them all out of the way to get to the front, looked at my face and then fixated himself at my chest for 10minutes! Dad would have beaten them all up! Frozen from the freezing mud we headed straight for the hot springs and yup they were amazingly hot. After a wicked soak, we cycled back throughly shattered. Cormarate fishing was an experience too. Its an ancient method for fishing, where the farmers used to tie the neck of the bird so that it couldnt swallow the fish, and after a few dives into the water, the farmer would ring the birds next to get the fish...genius! This guy (80 years old and as strong as an ox) rowed down the river with his $500 dollar bird (yes each) as we followed in a motor boat and watched as his birds did all the dirty work.
Yangshuo had some great shopping too...come on people you didnt expect anything less from
the shopaholics did you!!!
Not me i swear...all Jit's doing! BUt i do think we have a problem./b]
After 5 days in pure bliss surrounding we headed for Chengdu, the home of the Giant Panda. Kay was so excited she couldnt contain herself! My Pau (Jit) was now meeting the real Pau and his hometown! Our first train journey. 31 hours. Ouch. But to our surprise the trains were pretty comfi and the time flew by. The only issue we had was trying to get someone to understand that we wanted to be told when we arrived so we didnt miss the stop. But thankfully Chengdu was the last stop! Chengdu was not what we expected. Another giant concrete city. We were thinking more little city/town, but nooo! The food here was amazing. Sichuan provice is known for the tastiest spiciest, bum-on-fire food in all of China and boy did it live up to its name. Every dish we tried was great. It got better when we met James, a Chinese guy who spoke great English. This meant he could come with us to places and actually explain the menu to us. We had a Sichuan Hot Pot which is basically a massive pot of spicy as hell soup on a burner in the middle of the table
this thing was red hot in colour and had plenty of different red hot chillies in it and you order loads of little things to cook yourself (fondue) and it was great, but a little on the firery side! I tell you we were sore in the morning, but we didnt have a fridge to put the loo paper in. James also took us to a great tea house where we had traditional chinese tea with flowers, different but nice
Just for everyone's information you do not eat the flowers, you brush them aside and only drink the tea! Just in case you try it!. All in all he changed our opinion on Chengdu.
The pandas conservation center was amazing. We arrived early in the morning when the pandas are awake and eating (thats all they do, eat and sleep - who does that remind you of - eh hem).
The resemblence is uncanny! They eat till they comatose themselves and then just pass out...i present to you Jiten (aka Pau, Kung-Fu) Patel. There were loads of them, and
I'm not into cutesy stuff, but flipping heck were the fat little things cute. All eating and playing, climbing tree's. We even got a up close and personal view of a baby one who was clumsy as hell and kept falling all over the place...too cute. We didnt get to hold one as they were asking for 100 quid
yes pounds...ouch! Maybe next time! But they were great to just watch. Unusually human like. The way they look at you and act and play, was very human. After a while it just looked like a person in a suit like!
The hostel we were staying in also had loads of movies so me and Kay and some R&R time just chilling and lounging around.
like the rest of China. China has been our lazy country, our break away from the trip. It has been quite intense the last 3months and we just needed to stop a little, and China was that country! So far China has been the toughest place we have travelled. The language barrier, the staring, the spitting all had got the better of us on more than one occasion with both of us just flipping
out.
Me more than Jit But its all part of the experience I guess. Its not onto the more touristy places so hopefully we will see some fellow travellers who speak English, fingers crossed hey. Oh yea I've got my chopstick skills solid now, like a pro, but Kay on the other hand, well our good friend James said while laughing his head off and shaking his head in shame "Child like"!!! Enough said!
Weak was his words exactly! Anyway folks wish us luck for the last 2 weeks in China. Until next time!
Kung Fu Panda and KK47 out!
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Chinese meatballs really are the dog's bollocks!