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Published: September 24th 2006
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Hello! Is it Li you're looking for? After the bright lights of several big cities in China, it was time for a change of pace, so we headed for Yangshuo, a small town on the banks of the Li River in the south of the country.
Despite the tourist dominated town centre, it wasn't hard to escape the busy main streets and head into the countryside.
For the princely sum of two pounds, we hired a couple of sturdy looking mountain bikes for the day and armed with a (rubbish) map headed for some of the local sites.
Managing to go in completely the opposite direction from that which we intended turned out to be a perfect mistake.
The surrounding scenery of karst peaks and paddy fields was an almost perfect representation of what rural China looks like in your head.
After several happy kilometres with only a few pauses for Carolyn to take some (actually lots) of pictures I realised that I had a completely flat front tyre.
Clearly we weren't within easy reach of a major branch of Halfords, so it was going to be a case of soldiering on over the rocky
tracks, making slow, but steady progress.
What we hadn't counted on was a local rescuer. Appearing as if by magic from a field, pointing at the offending tyre and jabbering to us in Mandarin she indicated we should follow her. She led us to the local tyre repair man, aka her husband.
He set to work in a small hut with a sign proclaiming such services as 'Bike Repair', 'Coca-Cola sell' and 'Petrot Sell'. Meanwhile we were kept company by his wife and their small and incredibly cute little girl. Clearly she was determined to continue the family trade as she fought dad for the pliers and pump.
We had a fine conversation with the repairman's wife, her in Mandarin, us in English, with neither understanding a word of the other's rambling.
With our minor tyre drama solved, we returned to Yangshuo for a well earned comfy seat and hearty meal. A meal punctuated by pronunciation lessons as the eager waitress questioned Carolyn on such words as nescafe, crispy and gambas.
The following day we decided to give our legs a rest and try another form of local transport - the bamboo raft. We headed
to the next local town on a little bus which was never too full to admit another passenger.
As though they had been forewarned of our arrival, there were an army of determined local boat owners to greet our descent from the bus. If we thought that heading through town and into a local restaurant for lunch would be enough to deter them we were sadly mistaken as they calmly sat down at a neighbouring table and waited for us to finish eating.
Galling as it was on reaching the docks we had to accept one of their offers. Our bartering was helped by a lovely local girl called Katy who went to the international school in Yangshuo and had decided to bring her boyfriend on a river trip.
We agreed to share a boat with them, splitting the costs 4 ways rather than 2. Then we stood back and watched as a lengthy negotiation was concluded entirely in Mandarin.
It certainly worked in our favour as we ended up on a brilliant bamboo raft, just inches from the water. Actually, at some points we unwillingly had our toes dipped into the river. We were to
be further soaked later in the trip when the skies opened and we were poured upon.
It was initially an atmospheric addition to the scenery, but after a while it just got downright annoying as the cameras got bagged and we all tried to squeeze under the slightly flimsy canopy covering the raft.
A pleasant end to a long month in China.
The future's bright, the future's sweetly scented. And disinfected. Arriving in Hong Kong is a little like travelling forward in time a few years. The huge international airport has everything you'd expect from a science fiction movie. Including an internal train to carry you from your arrival point to the baggage reclaim. They also have temperature sensors to check you're not bringing some nasty disease with you.
The contrast from mainland China was exemplified by the public toilet standard. In China you got a hole in the floor with a bin for the non-existant paper, no flush and a very unpleasant aroma. In HK you got the full throne with disposable seat covers, seat disinfectant machine and auto flush.
Unfortunately the modern outlook had yet to reach the owner of the hostel we
had booked. In spite of emailing us confirmation of our booking he hadn't bothered to keep a room for us as his current guests had wanted to stay extra nights. He tried to sound reasonable by explaining that it was bad for business for him to have empty rooms and some people book and don't turn up. We argued that it was bad business to send confirmations to people then discard them at the first sign of an alternative offer.
It did mean we got to stay at the nearby Bin Man hotel instead - worth it for the name alone. And fortunately not living up to its name.
We did the touristy things - riding the peak tram (an almost vertical ascent) for a nice view of the haze, the star ferry from Hong Kong Island to the mainland at sunset and of course some shopping. Don't know that M&S pants are really the standard tourist purchase here though. That was all we could afford after an extortionate lunch in Soho. Well, extortionate when you've spent the previous 7 weeks counting the cost of meals in pennies rather than pounds.
Let them eat cake! So, another
Not London
Ruins of St Paul's day, another customs queue. We arrived from HK by hydrofoil (an experience more like flying than sailing) and felt as though we were back in China when we joined the queue to get yet another passport stamp.
Apparently Macau is famous for a few things; being near(ish) Hong Kong, belonging to Portugal (once) and being 'blessed' with several huge and really rather gaudy casinos.
However we were to leave with a distinctly different impression. With less than 24 hours in the city, we quickly ticked off the top tourist sight. See the photos for the ruins of St Paul's. From there, it was on to food. One legacy the Portuguese have left is a quite superb selection of cafes serving a ludicrous range of cakes and pastries.
It seems only fair that we sample the delights, seeing as quality confectionary has been hard to come by since we left Europe. We would highly recommend Cafe Nata run by a lovely woman called Margaret who served us chocolate croissants for breakfast and take away baguettes for the next plane journey.
Coups tale It seems that our brief stopover in Thailand, designed mostly to get us a cheap
Surprise!
David's shocked to hear Carolyn's had enough tea flight to Phnom Penh and a knocked off CD Walkman, has instead caused a huge shift in the South East Asian geo-political situation.
Thankfully we managed to escape to Cambodia before the tanks rolled on to the streets of Bangkok. Although, given the way the locals seem to be partying with the soldiers, perhaps we should have stayed for the photo opportunities.
As it was we stocked up on tourist essentials on the Khao San road (anti-malarials from Boots, fake t-shirts, music and yummy street food) and left at 4am the following day, blissfully unaware of the unfolding situation.
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Chief
non-member comment
Hi, was tipped off about your trip and associated blog. Glad to see you both well and enjoying things. Me very jealous!