China update

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Hey,

I left you last time at going to Huangshan to see the Yellow Mountains and to see abit of the surrounding villages. Well we managed to do that aswell as going to Guanzhou, Hong Kong, Guilin, Yangshoa and Nanning so lots of stuff again.

To start with the Yellow Mountains were spectacular very different to any other mountain scenery (see pictures). The walk was pretty hard though we decided to walk up the steepest Western Steeps and planned to do it in a day rather than the reccommended 2 days. Its just constant steps up towards the top I think we covered about 1000ms worth of steps! But it was worth it, we managed to get a quite clear day aswell which made things even better as the weather this time of year is normally misty.

The day before we went to some villages in the surrounding area, they were really nice but overrun by tourist which took the character away from it slightly. We followed a Chinese guide around and didn't understand a word but just went alonbg as she was showing the highlights of the villages which we might have missed. When we looked around on our own we escaped the crowds a little and discovered all the other nooks and cranies that they had to offer.

On the train to Guangzhou we crammed in to the upper beds which are impossible to situp in, and the girl below dragged our attention towards her camera. I initially thought that she wanted a photo of us but it actually turned out that she had already taken a photo of us in the yellow mountains. I first thought what a coincedence but then wondered how many other people on the train had a photo of us!

In Guangzhou we stayed on Shamian Island, would have been really nice if there hadn't been so much construction work being ongoing. It seems that the whole of china is under construction and sort of ruins the feel of the place a little, I suppose once its finally done it will be ok. Unfortunately when we arrived to the hostel all the dorms were full so we had to take an expensive double room as the prices had doubled for the weekend as it was the Chinese public holiday week and there was a fair on aswell. Fortunately the next day we managed to get a bed in the dorm rooms saving a bit of cash.

We didn't do the touristy things in Guangzhou just went to look at some art galleries and went into Yuxei Park which was nice and also free!

The next day was one of the highlights of our trip the most anticipated Hong Kong. We had one night here so we had a lot to cram in. We started by going to see the worlds largest sitting Buddha about 2hr outside where we were staying, it was really good and sort of calming so see this massive Buddha purchased on top of a hill. We went along the coastline to get there and past numerous amounts of deserted sandy beaches that all looked pretty good.

We left the Buddha and headed back deciding to take the ferry back to go and ascend up the famous Peak Tram. I would advice everyone who goes to Hong Kong to take the ferry wherever possible. Its cheaper and takes the same time as the tube plus you get an amazing feel of the place having bear hillside on one side and tall skyscapers on the other side.

The Peak tram is a reallt steep tram that allows you to go to a point to look over Hong Kong, it was very busy, and took us about 1hr to get on the tram. We did this at night to see the place lit up which was also really good.

I'm going to leave it there for now and will update the rest later,

all the best

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