HipHipSueRay

Hello everybody. So after 8 years of wanting to, we finally got to see the Longji Rice Terraces. We had originally planned on visiting in 2011, we even bought tickets, but life took a certain unexpected twist and instead of a holiday we got Liam. Liam's a better option. But, after all that time, today we took the trip out there and it wasn't disappointing. This whole area is so nice. I think everything gets lumped in as being a part of Guilin but Guilin as a city is pretty unremarkable from all accounts I've heard of it, although it seems like it's probably a pretty good base to check out some of the areas around about. We drove past it today on the way out to the terraces, it took about 2 hours each way, ... read more

Hey guys, So after Macau and Hong Kong and Immigration, we were pretty wrecked yesterday, so we just stayed in bed till lunchtime, then had lunch, then had dinner, then went back to bed, so that explains the absence of a blog. Today was vaguely more interesting though, although I think we slept for the same amount of time...We were hoping to go to a tea market to check it out today so we were taken to one a couple of blocks from where we are staying, we made it to the second floor, I'm not sure if it went any higher but it's, as you can probably imagine, filled with tea. That's one thing I really love about China, everything is sold in clumps, like when we went to Dafen the other day, all the ... read more

Hello. Today we went to Disneyland! This is important for a number of reasons, which I shall enumerate thusly. It's Disneyland We found our way there alone without Kate and Lloyd It's Disneyland! It was really cool. I thought I would like it, but was mostly doing it for the kids, but then I got on the train with Mickey Mouse windows, and there were bronze statues of Snow White and Donald Duck and Jimmy Cricket behind little perspex screens, and I found myself all giddy with excitement even before we arrived. Navigating the metro system in Hong Kong is, full disclosure, not a difficult thing. It all makes sense, everything is in English, the trains come every couple of minutes, there's not a lot to get wrong. But even so, we made it without error ... read more

Ola. So we got to see Macau in the light of day today and its pretty darn cool, maybe if we go to China again we should stop at Macau first for a few days as a sort of warm up for China, where everything looks a bit different, but there are a few things that are familiar and the language isn't such a big problem - it might lessen the culture shock a little bit. And it's really nice too. I forgot to mention earlier but a massive typhoon ripped through all the places we're visiting a week ago today, but you would hardly know it except for a few trees that they haven't dug up properly yet. They're amazingly efficient here and in Shenzhen too at cleaning up after the storm. So today after ... read more

Hello! We went to an area in Shenzhen called Dafen today - it's a really cool art district with a gazillion (I counted them) galleries for oil painters. It's awesome, basically an art factory - which sounds less romantic than it should - but some of the stuff is really really good. There was enough there to keep us going through the whole afternoon - lots and lots of walking but it was a really nice area. All the streets look the way you imagine they should, crowded and narrow, and even though it's in a grid there are little alleyways that stray off the main roads. There was one alleyway that we walked down that opened up into a bit of a bigger square where some guys had laid out a massive painting - it ... read more