LeeRhi
Lee and Rhian Joined: July 31st 2009
Logged in: November 26th 2010
Logged in: November 26th 2010
Travel Blog Posts
Mongolia is old school. In order to get a trip going we needed to find other people to share the cost of a jeep, driver and guide. So we started traipsing the streets of Ulaan Baatar to find them. We left notices in all the hostels and cafes in town and took the emails of other peoples notes. Eventually we got a bite, two french girls wanted to join us on a tour of the Gobi, along with two Singaporeans. this made the trip pretty cheap, at $30 a day each. Which was cheaper than we could find anywhere else in the city, then the French girls started arguing with the guide and wanted it for $28. The Singaporeans left and told us they wouldn't go with the French as they couldn't bare the sight of ... read more
Having been rejected by the Chinese, we tried our luck with the mongols. Fortunately the weekly train to Ulaan Baatar was on the last day of our visa, which saved us having to pay the 100 pounds a day we'd have to shell out if we overstayed the visa. We managed somehow to get a cabin to ourselves, and so traveled in luxury, making ourselves cups of tea as we rolled out of Beijing and into Inner Mongolia, after darkness fell we went to sleep, only to be woken up a couple of hours laterby the Chinese border officials. During the formalities the train went into a huge shed and the wheels were changed. This involved the carriages being shunted from one end of the shed to the other, resulting in a number of mini crashes. ... read more
It all started with travellers cheques - we went to a bank in Xi'an to change $600. Six cheques of $100 each. After waiting an hour, we were eventually seen. Having viewed the cheques with suspicion, the clerk asked Rhi to sign them, which she did. All six, one after the other. Ten minutes later, one of the signatures had apparently been forged, by Rhian, whilst she legally signed the other five! The whole batch needed to be re-signed. Copies of passports, visas and the cheques were taken into a backroom and another ten minutes passed before the clerk returned again. One cheque needed another signature. This was clearly the signature of their dreams as a novel started printing in the background. Armed with a box of papers in quadruplicate, Rhian again had to signe her ... read more
A city the size of Belgium, the population of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and a few more combined. It took us over an hour to get from the train station to our hostel. Both are apparently central. It's also a bit different from other parts of China, a bit more edgy. The people in more of a rush. I was even punched in the kidney by an old woman trying to get past me! We went to see the usual sights; Tian'anmen square, the Forbidden city, the Summer Palace, Olympic Stadiums etc. We also went to the Great Wall, it's over 3,000 miles long, but the more accesible parts are around Beijing. In an effort to avoid the tourist masses we headed out 100 miles from Beijing, we'd been extremely lucky as ... read more
Shanghai 2010. The Expo. 180 days of all other countries in the world exhibiting trinkets from their country. to date, 70 million visitors. I'm guessing that's around 400,000 a day. So it was little wonder that we couldn't get a train ticket to Shanghai for another two weeks. We decided instead to head somewhere completely random and we found ourselves in the small town of Pingyao. By small, we're talking Chinese small, so it's actually about the size of Swansea or Watford. Two things to note about Pingyao; first of all, it's freezing. And secondly, as our hostel owner said when we checked in; "Two nights is enough". As it was, we really enjoyed the time there. It was quiet, pleasant, friendly and we were able to wander around hassle free and enjoy a bit of ... read more
Once upon a time in the UK, the average British family was said to have 2.4 children, so technically, nobody was in an average family, baring a disastrous magic trick. In China, for a couple of decades now, there has been a one child policy. There's no doubt that it has helped control the country's population growth, but it's strange to witness some of the effects. Each child in China is sacred, far more so than in other parts of the world. The child will have no brothers or sisters, and for the new generation, this means no cousins either. As kids have no family children to play with, it's remarkably quiet when you see children. You can't help but think that this is going to cause big some big social changes. For a start, psychologically, ... read more
Train journeys in China are pretty interesting. Rumour has it that at any one time there are 10 million Chinese travelling on a train, or, if you prefer, the population of Portugal. Sometimes it feels as though that estimate is a little on the light side. Given the vast distances across the worlds third biggest country, it's surprising that it only takes a night to travel from one place to another. The people you meet make it an experience in itself. On our train journey from Kunming to Chengdu (south East to Central China) we were playing Rumi when we began to attract a crowd, our white faces standing out from the rest of the carriage. We invited one lady to play with us and she picked the game up alarmingly quickly (I guess this explains ... read more
After our eventful arrival in Xi'an, we said goodbye to Lina and tried to find the bus stop for 603. The map we had showed us that it should be right at the front of the staion. We started to walk down it's planned route and after 10 minutes we caught up with it. Running up to the door we knocked on it and the driver waved us away. So we overtook the bus and carried on walking with our backpacks on. Ten minutes later the bus came to the bus stop and we were allowed to get on. Bus drivers it would seem, are the same in China as they are in the UK. There really is only one reason to visit Xi'an, and that is the Terracotta armies. After checking into our hostel we ... read more
Pandas - China is famous for them, but if we're honest, they shouldn't exist. They've been around for 6 million years, which according to Darwinians is 2 million longer than most species survive. On top of this is the fact that they don't really like to breed that much, and when they are successful, often they manage to kill the babies by doing what pandas do best - Sitting. Just outside of Chengdu in China is a breeding centre where the staff encourage the shy bears to get jiggy and when they give birth the babies are partially cared for by humans. there are about 60 pandas at the centre and they're really happy doing not much at all, I don't really think I've seen so much laziness since we left Cayman. The project is pretty ... read more
We're starting to come to terms with our limited Chinese! We're managing to get what we want but it takes time! We left Guilin by train for Kunming in the south of China, from where we'll have another 10 hours of buses to the gorge itself. On the train there were seven Europeans (that includes English and Welsh for the Euro-sceptics), along with us tow there were three Germans, Jan - a young guy with an infectious enthusiasm for anything, and an older German couple who couldn't stand Jan. There was also a couple from Manchester. Leaving the German couple behind the five of us went to the restaurant cart and bought a few beers, chatted the night away gently easy the journey along until a worker on the train shouted at us. From the motions ... read more
