Day trip from Kowloon into China

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It was an early start today for us. We were at breakfast on opening at 0630, ready to have a quick brekky before being required at the Sheraton Hotel for the start of the tour at 0730.

We were picked up by the tour guide (Alex) who was quite funny and had a lot of info to tell us. He advised us what to do and say etc goingthrough China Immigration and what to be aware of while touring in China. He mentioned that we would most likely see many questionable copied products and beggars in the streets. It was a genuine tour of an average Chinese area etc and we were going to get a genuine view of it.

Things didn't start too well for us on the tour. Nic and I were both at Flight Centre when Lindsey passed our passport details to the tour operator for visa applications etc so we could get into China, but this wasn't processed at this end. We managed to fill out the applications etc at the China border and only had to wait 10 minutes for approval to enter. The immigration staff were very helpful and polite.

The boat trip from Kowloon to Shenzhen (Chinese for snake mouth!!) was good and it was interesting seeing the bridge connecting Kowloon and Lantau island (its the longest suspention bridge in the world).

We got onto the bus and the first thing I noticed was the steering wheel was on the left hand side. China drives the same side of the road as the Americans. Hong Kong in under Chinese rule, but drives on the left hand side of the road. Go figure!!

We were given a brief overview of the days activities and were soon on our way once the "group visas" were cleared.

Our first stop was Guangzhou, where we visited the museum and saw the main attraction of the tour - The Terracotta Warriors. The history behind them was fascinating, butit was a bit of a let down having four warriors only in the museum. The brochures obviously showed much more and made it sound much better. Anyway, they explained a lot about the warriors, how they were made, how many there were, the fact that every sculpturer was executed when his work was done etc. It was really interesting.

We had a short walk back to the bus (about 600m) but the 36 degree heat made it feel so unbelievably uncomfortable. We have never felt heat like this before.

Our next trip in the bus took us to a nearby zoo which had some Panda Bears in it. The Panda was resting when we got there (14hrs a day min rest), but soon got up so chew on some bamboo. I always thought they were smaller. This one was close to 6 foot tall. On our way back, we also came across another type of bear being led by his handler, and also an Elephant that was lifting his handler up and down with his trunk. We didn't hang around outside for long as it was too hot.

We then travelled to on a bit further and had a lunch at a local restaurant and walked through one of the markets. By this stage, we had travelled 200km and there was no respite in the amount of high rise buildings as far as the eye can see. It was strange to see a "vegetable farm" on the side of the road, and then the high risers right next to it. They don't belong together like that, but that's what the urban sprawl has done. Another thing we noticed is that you have about a 400m line of sight before everything dissapears into pollution haze. It was so unreal.

The meal at the restaurant was very nice. I think they knew we were all westerners and laid off the spices today. There was an assortment of about 8 different dishes set up on the lazy suzan, and you just grabbed what you wanted. Once that settled, we went for a walk through the market around the block. I couldn't belive the stuff they had there. All the veggies seemed normal, until we came across the smoked and dried oysters, shrimps, all sorts of other seafood just laying there in the shade. They even had scorpions, frogs and toads there for sale. Yes, they even eat scorpions!!

Once we got over that, we got back onto the bus and travelled to a Buddhist temple. The Buddhist philosiphy etc was explained to us which was very interesting,and we were warned again about the beggars. When we got there, there were about 10 beggars, all with something obvious happened to them, missing limbs, missing both hands etc. We were told not to give money or else there would end up being more and the Monks wouldn't have any room to get into their temple. Once inside, we were introduced toi the tower inside the temple. It was about 100m high and leaned badly to one side. China's equivalent to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. This temple also had the largest brass Budha statsues in the world, not one, but three. I will post a photo when I can get the laptop hooked up to the Net (Next Sunday hopefully).

After the temple, we went to Kan Ton to leave the country via china's second fastest train (up to 200km/hr). The trip back took 2hrs and we were escorted back to our hotel and collapsed for the day. It was a big (and hot) one.

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