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Published: March 21st 2012
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And you say graffiti ain't art!!
Graffiti hall of fame in Hong Kong Ni hau from southern China!
The land of outstanding countryside, men loudly clearing their flegmy throats, stew with dog and rat, and conversations conducted at 17 times the normal volume both face to face and over the phone.
Seems we have managed to visit both side of China with flashy Hong Kong and Macau to downright unassuming beauty in Yangshuo and Lijiang. In the former I loved pulling out my Octopus (Oyster) card to pay for dinner, but not for the snake balls which thanks to my terrible conversion rate head calculator meant they were 10 times more expensive than we thought (tasty though!). National History Museum was fab from geological formations through to the 1997 hand over - however the small semi propoaganda video at the end made me want to wash my brain a little. Was FORCED to overcome this through visiting a great view from the bar Sevva way up above the post office all the better to see all the people at HSBC tapping away at 8pm whilst enjoying a G&T and a laser light show!
We did Macau in style! Partly. You feel like you have been parachuted to South America with all
the signs in Portuguese and Kanji, however turns out even the Macanese dont speak Portuguese! We gambled and won, with the regulars laughing at our attempt to bet 10 quid when the minimum was 20. LOVED buying cocktails with chips - felt like James Bond. In contrast our home was a FLEE PIT. I can't emphasise this enough. It was set in a converted warehouse/slaughterhouse with MDF partitions extending most of the way to the ceiling. This enabled me to enjoy the bodily noises of my neighbours such as snoring and farting but my particular favourite was the vomiting. Oh yes. Respite from casinos came in the form of the Lo Lim Iok Gardens which were astoundingly beautiful, full of bonsai, lagoons, grottos, tai chi, musical instruments and pagodas.
Spent a while hopping through a few villages and cities to open my eyes a little. Gwangzhou floored me with the sheer number of people EVERYWHERE, and the minority villages of the Dong, and Miau did the same with their stunning karstic countryside (they look like giant doritoes), watch towers, massive wooden bridges made with no nails, and beautiful babies. Had a memorable breakfast in the dive of Kaiping at
a fantastically decrepid community hall which felt a little like a soup kitchen with 300 sets of eyes settling on the outsiders. But you soon make friends - seems that way in lots of place when groups of kids ask you to sign their books or have photos with you. Despite this I think I was ready at this point to break at the next person who spat on my shoe or pushed in front of me (do people not respect the sanctity of a good queue anymore??)
Thankfully Kunming, Yangshuo and Lijiang came to prevent a headline involving the line 'Nottingham girl goes Robin Hood on Chinese cities'. Our last stops in China were so chilled and gave us locations in which to enjoy the first proper afternoon beers of our trip (try booking an overnight train in a rammed station with hour long queues in 30 degrees when you only own cold weather clothes and not need a beer), see tribeswomen wear headdresses that look like they are made from tin foil for the purpose of inviting down alien visitors, have my first ever bicycle puncture, see my first Himalaya which is making me hanker for more,
and see Winman perform an acoustic set in a bar (Why wouldn't you?). Despite the bliss I had a less relaxing experience when we were staying with a kung fu master and his chickens in Yangshuo whilst trying to avoid the local delicacy of dog on moral grounds (yellow ones taste best and black ones worst apparently) by eating at Buddhist vegetarian restaurant, I was dealt a dose of Dehli belly 3 countries early - where is the khama in that??
My final Chinese hurrah was being stopped at the boarder crossing to exit as apparently I wasn't me. After being taken to a private room, my passport, signature, address and other ID being checked by 3 officials I was allowed to leave (I swear whilst they were laughing and pointing I heard him say 'They all look the same to me'😉.
Such a Chinese adventure. Now onto Vietnam where blogs and comms are not banned, so hopefully post much sooner next time!!
Lots of love
A xx
Some random transport related things that have made me chuckle and want to cry in China:
- Overnight trains and buses with full-on beds! Great value
costing 10 quid to sleep and travel 250 miles. New favourite thing.
- Accidentally hitch hiking in a van loaded with 14 others - TIP you get most room if you sit on a 20cm stool between the legs of an aged local man
- Waiting for a bus in a small village and seeing a woman standing on a drip. A DRIP!!!!!
- Being on a long windy bus journey when the woman next to you wearing a crash helmet vomits all over the floor between you
- Getting on a bus which is being loaded with baggage. One bag of which is a 1m x 1m plastic bag with 12 live ducks heads poking out
- Chinese infrastructure development is phenominal with mind boggling mountain pass tunnels and roads and new highways that mean your 'overnight' 12 hour bus takes 6 leaving you hotel-less at 3am on the side of a road
- The unintended entertainment on train journeys in the form on live infomercials with people who just start standing up with a sponge and bowl and demonstrating its absorbent qualities at 9pm, coupled with the music selection. Obviously music doesnt
have the same meanings across borders so being sent to sleep by the Wedding March and woken up with Auld Lang Seine had me in stitches.
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