2 Weeks in China

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We spent 2 weeks in China, visiting Hong Kong, Beijing, Xian, cruising on the Yangtze to see the 3 Gorges, Guillin, Yangshuo, and Longshen. We are backpackers and stay in budget places, and use Lonely Planet and Let's Go guidebooks as our main travel information sources. For all of our pictures from this trip please visit our website.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong skyline at night. For more pictures from our trip to Hong Kong see our Hong Kong slideshow

We flew from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Our experience as we arrived in Hong Kong couldn't have been better. It is an incredibly well organized and run airport (and city). An express train took us from the airport direct to downtown. The airport express is very well set up, with lots of room for suitcases, spotlessly clean, and very modern. (The stop indicator not only indicates the next stop, but also the train's progress towards that stop!)

When we arrived at the airport express train station downtown, we transferred to a free airport express bus. Although the train station is connected to the subway line, it was easier and faster to take the buses. The buses ferry airport passengers to various big hotels in Kowloon, where we were staying.

Almost all backpackers stay in either the Mirodor Mansion, or the Chung King Mansion. These 'mansions' are in fact just large buildings, with various floors owned by different guesthouses. We stayed at the Cosmic Guesthouse. Be aware that certain elevators go to odd floors, and others to even.

Although the floor that the guesthouse is on isn't that clean, once you enter the hallways of the guesthouse proper, it's spotless. The rooms are tiny, but very clean. We ended up with 2 "single" beds instead of a "large" bed, because the large bed was in fact the size of a twin American bed - definitely not big enough for us!

The hotel included Air Conditioning and TV for under $20 US a night. It was still relativetly quiet, despite being in the "thick of it" in Kowloon.

We wandered the Golden Mile for a little bit, got some dinner from a delicious bakery, and went to bed.

Early the next morning, we took the subway (couldn't have been easier!) to the Old Bird Market, where old men walk their birds and socialize. We bought a birdcage, and set off to explore the flower market. On a weekday there wasn't much going on here - just a couple of flower stores, but nothing that special.

We wandered down and around Nathan St. back towards our hotel, picking up a large plastic box to ship our new birdcage home in. We passed through the Fa Yuen St. market, which is a large market selling everything from souvenirs to every knockoff Western brand imaginable. We picked up a couple of cushion covers for a $1 each. Nathan St. is packed with mobile phone shops, electronics shops (with electronics of questionable origin), and other higher-end shops. We wandered around some of the large shopping malls - nothing too interesting here for us, compared to the markets. We walked down Hong Kong's new "Avenue of the Stars", with handprints from the likes of Jackie Chan and Jet Li. The avenue is built on a walkway out on the water, and has stunning views of the Hong Kong skyline (and so it is worth going for the views, if not for the stars). It is certainly one of the best places for the classic night-time shot of the skyline.

We ate a nice dinner at the food court in the Harbor Shopping Center. There are even views of the harbor from there! Later that evening we checked out the Temple St. Night Market. Although it wasn't that big (it only took us 30 minutes to wander through) there was lots of souvenir shopping, as well as more kitschy knock-off Western brand clothing.

We had planned to go up Victoria Peak for a night time view of the skyline, but the cloud level was very low and we guessed we would see nothing. We contented ourselves instead with wandering back to the Avenue of the Stars.

The next day was our day on Hong Kong Island. After a quick stop at the Post Office (which was incredibly organised and easy to use!) to mail home our bird cage, we took the Star Ferry from Tsi Sha Tsui West Ferry Pier. It takes about 10 minutes to cross the river with nice views along the way. From the ferry terminal on the island, there is a tourist bus service to take you the 600m to the Victoria Peak tram, but we walked it. There are signs every 50 feet directing you to the tram - it is almost impossible to get lost.

At the top of the peak, there is a cafe (with a great blended iced coffee), and a nice walk to see the panorama. When we were there, they were in the middle of building an even nicer building to allow better views.


Mid-Level Escalators After taking the tram down, we walked to the Central Mid-Level Sscalators, the longest covered escalator in the world. It was about a 20 minute walk, and again, impossible to get lost. The escalators change direction morning and night, and unfortunately we were there at the wrong time so we just took a few pictures. It wasn't anything that special, either - the escalators in Barcelona are far more impressive!

We walked down to the main street on Hong Kong Island and took the double-decker streetcars to Victoria Park (strangely enough, it's quite a walk from Victoria Peak!). The Park is huge, and features a running track with exercise equipment all the way around. We saw this sort of outdoor public gym facilities everywhere in China (although perhaps not on the scale that we saw in Victoria Park). We played on the equipment for a while, trying to figure it out, while the locals looked on smiling.

We enjoyed lunch at a vegetarian restaurant Fantasy Vegetarian Restaurant, about a 20 minute walk from the park and right next to the subway. We then ran back to our hotel, picked up our bags and headed for Beijing.



Our flight with Cathay Pacific was everything we hoped for from the world's #1 airline. Efficient, friendly staff, and a very comfortable flight with good food.

Beijing

For all our photos from our trip to Beijing, please visit our website.

Chinese visa formalities went off without a hitch. Taxis were everywhere to take us to our hotel, but we had been warned in our guidebook about dishonest airport taxi drivers so we opted for the bus. We quickly realized we had left the land of English everywhere when we left Hong Kong. We managed to work out that yes, we were on the right bus, but it didn't drop us off anywhere near where we were staying. We got off at the last stop and were immediately flooded with offers of rides in various forms of transportation, but luckily we knew the way to the subway. It was about a 30 minute walk.

The Beijing Subway was extremely easy to navigate. There are signs in English everywhere, and it was never so crowded as to make seeing where to get off hard. We were staying at Easter Morning Sun International Youth Hostel (HI), which was the closest budget hotel to the Forbidden City on Wangfujing Dajie. Our guidebook directions couldn't've been more wrong, but fortunately an expensive hotel down the road called for us and sent us on our way to the much cheaper hotel. We were paying 120 yuen for an underground room with no windows and shared facilities. The room was clean, although the showers and toilet, while mostly clean, had questionable plumbing. (Half the sinks had no drain, so water dumped directly to the floor. The one Western toilet stall was so small it was a difficult squeeze). We were the only non-Chinese staying there, and it seemed there were several Chinese students who were actually living there. There were no private locks on the door, but there was always a guard (mostly awake) who would lock up the room during the day and unlock it for you at night.


In the morning, we headed straight for the Forbidden City, walking down Wangfujing Dajie along the way. The site was crowded with Chinese tour groups, but we only saw a handful of westerners. It took us a couple of hours to visit most of the site. Although there isn't much to see inside the buildings (most of the contents now are in museums in Taiwan, apparently) the grounds are fabulous.

From the main entrance, it's a short walk to Tianamen Square. We stopped for a delicious vegetarian meal at Gongdelin Vegetarian Restaurant (highly recommended!). From there, we continued south in a line towards the Temple of Heaven. It proved to be more of a walk than we had thought and we should have taken a taxi. The Temple of Heaven has beautiful peaceful grounds, with lots of grass and trees, musicians playing traditional music, and of course great buildings to explore. We left by the far entrance. Our next stop was to be the Chinese Acrobats at the Tiandi Theater. We took a taxi. It took a very, very long time to get where it should have been due to extremely heavy Beijing traffic on the ring roads. It took us about 45 minutes to determine that our guidebook was wrong. It was only a year out of date, but the recommended theater had closed with not a trace of it left. We hurriedly grabbed a taxi to another recmomended theater, the Chaoyang Theater, and fortunately only missed the first 10 minutes of the show.

The acrobats were incredible, and we would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Beijing.

We headed back to Qianmen, where there was supposed to be the best place to eat Peking Duck. The recommended restaurant had already closed (restaurants in China close early!). A man appeared telling us when it would be open tomorrow, and then ran after us telling us there was another "branch" of the same restaurant round the corner and he would take us to it. Hook, line, and sinker we followed him to a completely unrelated restaurant. Despite very clear instructions to the waitress that my wife was vegetarian, they tried to make us pay for two meals of Peking Duck. After a big argument, they finally backed off, but despite how delicious the duck was, we left with a bad taste in our mouth.

The following day we was our day to visit the Great Wall of China (at Badaling, the most accesible section from Beijing). The previous day, we had already scoped out the departure point for the public bus that we thought would take us to the Great Wall.

Great Wall of China,Badaling

No one on the bus spoke English, but we confimed with the driver that this was indeed the bus for the Great Wall. As we started out, a tour guide spoke to the rest of the bus in Mandarin. Then, inexplicably, in the middle of Beijing, the bus stopped and everyone piled out. We sat, confused. We finally figured out that they had all gone on a guided visit of another site and would be back in 2 hours! We finally met someone who was able to translate for us, who explained that the "tourist bus #4" to Badaling was in fact an all-day Chinese guided Tour, stopping at 4 different places - definitely not what we wanted! Fortunately, we met a couple of other confused Europeans who only wanted to go the Great Wall. We bailed on the tour group, and piled into a taxi that we rented for a day, for $7 each. I still don't know if there's any public buses to the Great Wall. If we'd stayed with the tour group, I would guess that we wouldn't have had more than 2 hours at the Great Wall.

After the problems in Beijing, we arrived relatively late at the Great Wall (10:30AM). The taxi dropped us off about a 15 minute walk from the wall (we're not sure why, there was a road that led directly there). Where the road goes under the wall, it is possible to walk on either side. Curiously enough, one side was almost completely empty while the other side was full of tourists (maybe tour groups?). Hiking up the wall is very hard work - even at Badaling, the most accesible part of the wall. The steps are very steep in places. The railings help, but unfortunately a lot of them are designed for short Asians and not giant Westerners, so they are not always comfortable to hold without dislocating a shoulder.

There are multiple ways to get up and down the wall as it snakes around the mountains at Badaling - there's a couple of chairlifts and a "sliding car" system. Access to these improvements wasn't clear to us - we had no map of the area and we didn't want to wander far out of the way and miss our taxi home. Other 'development' at this section of the wall includes loudspeakers piping in traditional Chinese music. Fortunately, the souvenir and drink sellers are kept to a minimum (they are relegated to the turrets) and are not that aggressive.

We returned to Beijing, and visited Prince Gong's Mansion. Although quite picturesque, it was packed with tourists, which made it hard to enjoy (and get good photos of!). There's some tourist trap thing where you can pay to get in to a building and drink tea and eat biscuits, but we passed. We wandered around the Hutongs surrounding the mansion on foot, and headed towards the Bell Tower. The Qianha Lake (Houhai Lake) is pretty and makes for a nice break in the city. We were running out of time, so we took a taxi over to the Lama Temple (A Buddhist Temple). This is an active temple, and very peaceful. The complex is quite big, so allow lots of time to explore all the buildings.

Beijing Opera

Next up on our whirlwind tour was the Chinese Opera. We returned to Qianmen by metro (so fast. Forget taking a taxi in Beijing during rush hour, which appeared to be most of the day!). The opera house at the Huguang Guild Hall was about a 30 minute walk from the metro. We did not buy tickets in advance, nor did we need to. It was an interesting experience - not one I'd repeat, but still one I'd recommend. For our Western ears, the tones were a little harsh. For me, it was very impressive, the sounds being produced by the singers were very different from anything I'd ever heard. The costumes are fantastic - so colorful.

We headed back to the hostel for the night. The next day, we took a taxi to the Summer Palace outside the city. It's a huge site, and would take most of a day to cover. Unfortunately, we only had a couple of hours. We wandered around, a little lost, since we didn't have a good map. There are boats that cross the lake that we could have taken, but we didn't know where the boats went or left from. Heading back into the city, we took a bus, which took a very, very long time as it wound around the city. We stopped at Gongdelin for a delicious vegetarian lunch (this was Wendy's favorite restaurant in China). Afterwards we headed to our final stop of the day, the Silk Alley market. Our guidebook described it as a tourist trap outside market. What we found was different - an indoor multi-level market. (apparently it replaced the outdoor market). Prices on souvenirs started out exhorbitantly high, but came down quickly to very reasonable levels. I bought a fairly big mask for $3, we bought a 4 foot painted fan for $20, and DVD's were about $2 each. Lots of jewellery, watches, etc. We wished we'd had more time there.

We headed back to the hotel via subway, picked up our bags, and headed to the train station for our night train to Xi'an. Beijing West Train Station was a bit confusing. It's one of the largest train stations we'd ever seen. There are separate waiting areas for soft-sleeper passengers, but we stuck with the crowd. We bee-lined for some other Western tourists, who explained to us that yes, we were in the right place. The cabin was very comfortable, with 4 berths and a locking door. We slept very well and arrived on time in Xi'an.

In Xi'an, we were supposed to meet a rep from the travel company that sold us the train tickets to pick up our overnight ticket from Xi'an to Chongqing. We had already paid for them in Beijing, but they told us we would have to take delivery in Xi'an. Turns out that the promised soft sleeper was not available - that only a hard sleeper was not available. We had visions of sleeping on a wooden board overnight - but it turns out there is still a mattress, the only difference being a non-lockable compartment, and 3 berths on each side. We even managed to get a refund for the price difference in our train tickets.

Apparently, securing Xi'an Train Tickets is always difficult. There is a large black market for the tickets, and so buying in advance at face value is difficult, if not impossible.

Xi'an

For all the photos from our trip to Xi'an, please visit our website.

We checked in to the Liberation Hotel in Xi'an, right across from the train station. The room was expensive, but it was nice, with AC. The location certainly couldn't have been better! We set out on foot to explore Xi'an. It's a pretty easy city, with wide streets, and lots of pedestrian overpasses. Shopping was great - again, we were the only Western tourists and were definitely the star attraction. We also visited the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower. The night market was nothing special - certainly nothing of interest for guys. We think we ate at the Old Sun and Family Restaurant but we're really not sure. No one spoke English, and the sign wasn't in English either. Fortunately, a non-resident Chinese family inside the restaurant saved us from some ordering mistakes.

Terracotta Warriors of Xi'an

In the morning, we headed out to the star attraction of Xi'an, the Terracotta Warriors. A bus leaves from right outside the hotel and took us directly there, comfortably. First up we visited the museum, which is a large modern building, with nice air-conditioning and is well organized. The museum's collection consists of some better-preserved artifacts from the digs of the area and is worth checking out. English signage was good. After about half an hour, we headed to see the pits of the warriors themselves.

Unintentionally, we visited the pits from least interesting (smallest) to largest - it turned out to be a good order to do things in. The pits are semi-air conditioned, and it was comfortable wandering around even in the heat of the day. Although signs up everywhere said "no cameras", everyone was taking photos even right in front of the guards, so we ignored the rules as well. We got some good photos, but a tripod would certainly help here.

When heading back to town, beware of the more expensive shuttle buses that will try to entice you in. We are guessing they "leave when full", and the cheap public bus was very fast anyways.

We killed time until our night train. If we had to do it over again, we would have spent less time in Xi'an - we sort of ran out of things to do (although fortunately there was good shopping).

Chongqing

For all our photos from our trip to Chongqing, please visit our website - See all our Chongqing pictures here

The hard sleeper to Chongqing was very comfortable, and fun - lots of people to meet and try to talk to.


Liberation Monument in Chongqing

Chongqing

Chongqing is the jumping off point for most of the shorter Yangtze/Three Gorges cruises. We had arranged to have 2 tickets on a Chinese Cruise Ship ahead of time, and it was certainly one of our biggest worries as we arranged the trip. It was arranged through the official port office, Chongqing Port International Travel Service, or CQPITS. We paid $250 each for 3 nights/4 days, including a guide and all tours. (but not including food). We had our Chinese friend call in advance to arrange this for us. Our thought was that so long as it was reasonably comfortable (AC, Shower) we didn't care about the quality of the guiding, or the food on the boat. It turned out to be a disaster.

When we arrived early in the morning, someone from the tour company picked us up at the train station and brought us to the office. We had hoped to be able to see the boat and make sure everything was ok, but we weren't able to, as departure wasn't until the evening. We paid and had to hope for the best. We were able to leave our bags in the office, and went off to explore Chongqing for the day.

There really isn't much to see in Chongqing. Shopping was mostly restricted to high-end shopping malls filled with Christian D'or etc. shops - the sort of shopping mall that the Chinese people were very proud of, but have absolutely no interest to us. We took advantage of the downtime to do some emailing, tried to arrange some train tickets for later in the trip (but we weren't able to), and stocked up on supplies for the boat trip from a Carrefour in town.

Yangtze Boat Cruise

For all the photos from our Yangtze cruise through the Three Gorges, please visit our website

Back at the port, we picked up our bag and met our "tour guide" who didn't speak a word of English. Turns out he wasn't to be our tour guide on the boat, but his replacement wasn't much better - the only words he spoke were "Let's Go!". Anyways, we went down to the boat by funicular. The boat was in pretty bad shape. The carpets had never, ever been changed, and our air conditioner, the few times it did work, leaked into the floor, so by the end of our trip, we had our own Yangtze in between our beds. We had to move all of our belongings to higher ground in the room. However, the biggest problem was the water. The water was being taken directly from the Yangtze with no filtering whatsoever. It ran brown. All the time. Besides being filthy, it's also dangerous - the Yangtze Basin is known for some water-borne snail that is invisible, burrows in to your skin, and causes all sorts of problems (schistosomaisis/bilharzia). So, for the entire length of the cruise, we took wet-nap showers, and even washed our hands in bottled water. (Fortunately there was a little shop on board that sold bottled water). I even rigged up a water bottle underneath the air conditioner unit, where the pipe should have been to drain the water. So we collected water from the AC and washed our hands with that too.

Ghost City

We were the only white people on the whole boat. There was a couple of decks from which we could watch the scenery go by, but the decks were often crowded. We often had to step over people crashing out on the floor to get outside - the boat had many classes of accomodation, including transport only.

Anyways, our first stop in the morning was the "City of Ghosts " (Fengdu). This is a city that had to be abandoned due to the rising water levels of the Yangtze because of the dam. It was mildly interesting. There was also a temple to visit, but since I wasn't feeling well, and we couldn't keep up with the boat's tour group (and neither could we understand the tour guide) we headed back to the boat.

Later in the day, the mist cleared up and we fortunately had some beautiful weather that lasted most of the rest of the trip. Even though most of the photos we'd seen of the Three Gorges were in fog, we were lucky enough to have sunshine as we sailed through the gorges. The scenery was beautiful - although to be honest, not as picturesque as the Fjords in Norway. At one point we hopped off our main boat into a smaller boat to tour the "Little 3 Gorges" (aka "Lesser 3 Gorges"), and then we hopped off that point into even smaller boats for a ride up a very narrow gorge ("Mini 3 Gorges").

The entertainment never stopped on the boat. There was always something going on - at one point, they had arranged to have people on the banks of the river sing to us as we went by. We got off the boat and saw some sort of dance performance. And when all else failed, the tourguides organised a singalong on the boat. Amazing. During the hottest part of the day (which also happened to be some of the prettiest gorges) we had the deck to ourselves, since the Chinese have a firm dedication to staying as white as they can, so they all hid inside.

On the last day on the boat, we saw the dam at night. It's probably more impressive during the day, there wasn't really that much to see at night. We didn't get that close to it - Just a view from the side of it. After the dam, we were taken to an outdoor horsemanship show, an aquarium, the locks and some sort of temple. We didn't get back to the ship until midnight. The stamina of these people is amazing - little old men were racing ahead of us, and we'd all been up since 5 am when we'd entered the first gorge!

Three Gorges on the Yangtze

On the final night, the boat remains docked at Yichang. Although we weren't supposed to get up till 6am, our 'tour guide' woke us up at 3am "let's go!", until we explained to him that we would be taking the later bus to Wuhan (the nearest train station).

Unfortunately, the bus dropped us off on the wrong side of Wuhan, and by the time we made it to the right train station for our southward journey to Guilin, we'd missed the train we wanted to get. At least we were able to get a hard sleeper reservation. We had a great time on the train, playing cards with the locals - fortunately a student from Wuhan University translated for us.

Guillin

For all our photos from our trip to Guilin, please visit our website.

We arrived in Guillin early in the morning, and tried to get a taxi, but none of them understood where we wanted to go. (Kexie Hotel) (We didn't have a Chinese translation of our hotel name). We set out on foot with our packs. It took us about an hour to find the hotel, where we took one of the best showers of our lives (it had been 5 days). It was a basic hotel, but mostly clean, with hot water and a location that couldn't be beat.

In Guillin, we visited the Reed Flute Cave Park. This park has some hiking (but it was way too hot for that) and a cave with beautiful formations (stalagmites and stalactites). Unfortunately, the cave had been 'developed', as the Chinese so love, with neon lights and hilarious Engrish names of the formations. We managed to avoid the tour group and set out on our own - which would have been good, except we ended up following the tour group anyways, because they only illuminate the cave for the groups.

We headed back in to town (via taxi - they were pretty desperate for business, and the price offered was cheaper than the bus!) and went to check out the Ming Prince Mansion. The price was ridiculous however - we looked from the gate and decided to pass. The rest of the day we spent shopping. Guilin has a peaceful pedestrian-only shopping area, (with lots of DVD shops, 65 cents each!), and other souvenirs. At night time, there is a central square that bustles with activity - children playing in jumpy-jumps and riding around in little electric cars. There's a great night market with lots more shopping.

All in all, even though the sights of Guilin weren't what we'd hoped for, the relaxed pace and shopping more than made up for it.

The next day we first headed back to the train station to get our tickets for Vietnam. Even though we weren't going to leave for a couple of days, we wanted to beat the black market system and actually pay the ticket price - so we had to be at the train station as soon as the tickets went on sale. We ran and managed to get soft sleeper all the way to Hanoi.

Yangshuo

For all our photos from our trip to Yangshuo, please visit our website.

We then headed to Yangshuo where we finally saw other backpackers. And of course, to go with it, touts, and pushy shopkeepers. Oh well. Yangshuo is a great place to check out the karst formations that are on so many Chinese postcards. We rented some bikes and headed north along the river. Eventually the path became very muddy, and some construction equipment blocked our path, so we headed back to town and went the other way. It was a very pleasant relaxing way to check out the formations. We were surprised, however, how few people were doing this. I think most people take boat tours along the Li river although the way our guidebook talked about it, it was a dicey proposition, as the Chinese governement is trying to clean up the river and has some strict regulations on motorized traffic.


After our bike tour, we did some more shopping. The market along the river was deserted, but still interesting. Ian tried eating silk worm - they were pretty shocked that a white guy was trying. The taste was pretty inoffensive, but he restricted himself to just the free taste. 😊

Longshen

For all our photos from our trip to Longshen (Longji Titian Terraced Rice Fields), please visit our website.

We headed back to Guilin. The next day we packed our bags and headed to Longshen. Longshen is only a couple of hours away, in the mountains, and is known for it's terraced rice paddies, like those that can be seen in Indonesia or in Sa Pa in Vietnam. We checked into the Riverside Guesthouse, which was pretty basic, but had Western toilets, and a cockroach. (At night we sealed the door and we didn't see any more). We went to look for a bus that was supposed to take us to the Longji Titian rice fields. Then things started to go wrong.

First, our hotel owner told us to relax in her cafe, and she would get us when the bus was coming. Mistake #1. About a half hour after the bus was supposed to go, we finally gave up on her and headed to the street. We found a bus whose driver claimed to be going to the rice fields, but he didn't speak English. Mistake #2. This bus did a huge circuit through the mountains and villages, seemingly going everywhere BUT Longji Titian. No one spoke English. Even when we stopped to check out one of the scenic areas along the way, we were unable to even communicate at the most basic level using our Lonely Planet phrasebook like we'd done everywhere else - "when does the bus leave?" Since we didn't want to be abandoned in the middle of nowhere, we stuck within sight of the bus, frustrated.

We looped back on ourselves, and as we started getting visibily upset as we could see our chance to see the rice fields slipping away, one of the passengers finally got up the courage to speak some English, and helped us communicate with the driver. We were told we would have to transfer to another bus, or walk 3km up the mountain. We got off at a junction in the road, and waited for this mysterious other bus, as daylight slipped away. At least we weren't alone: there was some Longji 'natives', with their incredible long hair, available to show you their hair for photos, for a fee of course. Take that, native culture!

Coach tour bus after coach tour bus went up the hill, but no sign of a public bus. We finally got a taxi the rest of the way, and sprinted up the rice fields.
It was well worth the stress of the day, the view was absolutely fabulous. As far as the eye could see, beautiful rice paddies. Layers of fog drifted through the mountains, and it started to drizzle, but we still made it up to Viewing point #1. It's one of those images that is seared into my memory from the trip. We only wished we'd been able to stay longer. There's a cluster of budget hotels/resthouses nestled in amongst the rice paddies, and it would have been a very nice base for a day or two.

The next day, we headed to Vietnam on the train.

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