The next step in Asia... China.

Asia » China » Beijing
April 11th 2009

Published: May 25th 2009

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WillTKinsey

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Hong Kong waterfront

I met a guy in thailand who gave had just come from Hong Kong who gave me his guide book and wrote down some stuff in the back of it for me, which meant upon arrival I knew which bus to get, where to get off etc etc... so how hard could it be to get form the airport to the hotel? not hard at all, except I got off the bus about 10 stops too soon and had no idea where I was... managed to get the tube over to the right place and find my hotel though so it worked out fine. Spent time in Hong Kong catching up on sleep for the first few days and then doing the sights. I went to see the 'Symphony of Lights' which is the biggest light and laser display in the world... was good, made slightly tacky by the music put behind it, but it was worth seeing. Went to the museums of art and science and technology which were really good, and spent the rest of the time seeing different areas of Hong Kong. I reminded me a lot of New York, nice place to walk around, big contrasts though,

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Bruce Lee sculpture on the avenue of the stars

you can go from pretty seedy areas straight into areas where there are huge Armani and Chanel stores. Ramdomly ran into two sets of people I'd met in India which was wierd! Good to see them and catch up though.
From there I took an overnight 20 hour sleeper train up Shanghai which turned out to be one of the best night's sleep I'd had so far!! Really comfy pillows and a big duvet and I met some europeans on the train in my compartment, which was lucky considering pretty much every other person on the train was chinese and spoke no english. Shanghai was good, I had a really nice hostel and I did all the sights. Very easy to get around on the metro.Went out a few times, one night we went to a jazz club which was really good.
From Shanghai I got the train up to Beijing and stayed in a pretty cool hostel and met a lot of people. I went to see the forbidden city, a huge area of buildings which were once completely off limits to anyone other than the royalty I think, absolutely huge. I wanted to go to Mao's mausoleum where

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Avenue of the stars, HK

you can see Mao's pickled and preserved body, didnt work out with the timings in the end. We went out to the Summer palace and spent most of the day there, again, a huge place with some really good views and nice buildings.
I tried lots of the chinese food available, in a restaurant oppostie our hostel one day we all ate loads, all different dishes and it somehow came to 1 pound per person!Also tried real peking duck which was nice.
All in all China was colder and has less beaches than India or Thailand but was still great to see, interesting to begin to get to know another culture and another type of people. The chinese seemed very different from western people, often really rude, coughing and spitting everywhere and barging past people on the trains and then other times really friendly, really hospitable. One time my friend was buying a teapot and we sat having tea for an hour or so with the woman in the shop and then her husband came in and played on this old chinese instrument for us. With more time I would have got out of the big cities, and I think

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having just done HK, Shanghai and Beijing I didnt really see the complete picture of China, these places are big boasting symbols to the rest of the world and to see some of the smaller and poorer places would definately be worth doing. Anyways, from China on to Australia to meet up with Mum and Dad!

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