The Beard Fascination Files and Ascerbity Hot Murphy

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China, where do I start?

We are doing an organised tour through China with Intrepid, mainly because at the time we wanted to get our visa the whole Olympics hoopla was making getting visas difficult, in the end we probably didn't need to, but we are looking at it as a bit of a holiday from our holiday in that we don't really have to think, we have someone doing it for us.

China is big, everything is big and there are so so many people, many of whom seem to be on holidays, visiting the same attractions as our little group complete with mega-phone wielding tour guides who shriek in what is probably Mandarin, but who knows....

It feels as if we have moved further, faster in the last 2 weeks than we have in the last 2 months (we probably have), from Hong Kong which was the meeting point for the group, we caught our first overnight train to Guilin ( complete with dining menu serving Ascerbity Hot Murphy, which is a spicy and sour potato dish so the translation is not all wrong), and then a local bus to the scenic town of Yang Shuo, where the local food speciality is Beer Fish....our kind of town. The next day we did a cycling tour through the surrounding countryside and climbed Moon Hill for a scenic view of the area. It's not a very tall mountain, which is fortunate for the local women who climb it beside you, fanning you all the way (one local for every tourist, I'm not kidding), carrying their little esky of drinks in the hope that once you reach the top you will buy one from them at three times the price you would have paid at the bottom. You end up buying from them at some stage...how could you not. Our visit to Yang Shuo also included a light show (choregraphed by the guy who did the opening ceremony), and some cooking lessons.

After Yang Shuo, another overnight train to Wuhan and then a bus to Yichang, from there we joined the boat for a 2 night cruise of the Three Gorges. We stocked up on alchohol in Yichang (9 of us), and our bus was stopped for suspected explosives on the way to the dam....our poor guide had to explain we were just a bus of boozed up Westerners. The tunnel system to get to the dam, the dam, the gorges were all amazing. The first night on the boat we had a beer and karaoke night and missed our 6am wake-up call and almost missed the 7am boat to take us up a smaller stream. The vastness is hard to describe, so hopefully Patrick will solve his facebook photo issue soon and we can show you. The next day we visited the world's biggest dam (handstand photo) and caught a plane to Shanghai.

We loved Shanghai, and wished we would have loved to have stayed longer. Here we took a ride on the World's fastest train (handstand photo) and climbed to the World's highest observation deck (another handstand photo), ate the best dumplings and wontons we had ever tasted and spent an evening drinking beer with the locals. After three nights in Shanghai we left for Hangzhou for a lake cruise, a visit to a tea plantation and a visit to an ancient temple complex which rivalled anything we had seen in Thailand.

It's all go-go-go China in 28 days, so once again it was back on a bus and off to Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain), where it was photo ops with Paddy and the locals at the top of the mountain, as all the locals wanted a happy snap with the crazy bearded foreigner to add to their holiday collection. We should start charging, it might pay for our trip.

After Huang Shan, we killed a couple of hours in Huang Shan City, before yet another overnight train to Suzhou and a bus to Zhouzhang, an ancient town built on canals, very picturesque, but also very touristy. One night here and then back to Suzhou, where we are now, waiting to board....you guessed it...another overnight train to X'ian, home to the terracotta warriors.

Whilst the locals are enamoured with the beard, I am not. It's days I think, are numbered.

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