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Published: January 30th 2009
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Beijing, Xi'an, Panyu
Happy New Year to everyone!
Well, thank goodness I didn't go to Phuket. At one point I was planning on going there. Made the right choice not to. What a horrid disaster.
Well, I've made it back to Hong Kong from my travels. What an experience.
Our tour was in Cantonese, so I really had to guess what was going on. We had two translator friends with us, who helped us out. Why take a Cantonese tour and not an English one? Well, it way cheaper - more than half price!
BEIJING
Beijing is a very modern city, with massive skyscrapers everywhere. They almost seem wider than they are tall. Everything in this city is built on a huge scale. Although many of the buildings are empty inside. I think they just build them to impress the locals and tourists.
We saw all the major sites in the city form the Forbidden City to the Summer Palace. It snowed most of the time we were there, so we had many of the attractions to ourselves!
Pollution in Beijing is really bad. Worse than Santiago in the winter. Everyday we were there you could barely
see the sun from the pollution. Gross.
For Christmas lunch we ate Peeking Duck. It was OK, but no turkey. Xmas dinner was a "hot pot" which is an assortment of Chinese vegetables and meats. I took a photo, so you'll see it when I get a chance to download them.
The Great Wall was amazing. We hiked up pretty high into the mountains, and would have went further but we had to get back to the bus before it left.
XI'AN
Xi'an is what I expected China to be like. Xi'an is a city of about 6 million with haphazard city planning and people living in extreme poverty directly next to a brand spanking new 5 star hotel.
Located in central China in one of China's poorest provinces, its main attraction is the Terracotta Warriors. I saw them - what an amazing site - each warrior has its own individual face! And there's over 7,000 of them.
The translations in Xi'an were laughable. I took photos of a few, but just about every sign had errors on them.
Media censorship in Xi'an was greater than Beijing. In Xi'an there was no CNN, or any English programming for that
matter and it was almost impossible to get news on the Tsunami. Even the Chinese stations limited the broadcast. The "China Daily" English newspaper had headlines about people helping to construct a new park in a city, about a family that worked extra hours at a bakery to make sure Christmas cakes were ready, you know - no news stuff.
Spitting and horking was everywhere, even by the women. And the belching. Its just so hard to get used to seeing this, particularly by women...
It was cold in Xi'an and many people just make a fire on the sidewalk. People has walk in the middle of the roads and even on the highway and wont move, even when approached by on coming traffic.
One night we were able to get to Mc Donalds. I was in heaven - after 7 days of Chinese food it seemed to be the best thing I had ever eaten. Just imagine eating rice for EVERY MEAL. I mixed in chicken or beef and veggies when it was available. If it was seafood, than I just ate rice. But now I can kind of use chopsticks - kind of... AT one restaurant the waitress
was so unimpressed by my chopstick ability she stood next to me and helped serve me for the ENTIRE MEAL - we all had a good laugh about that.
The pollution in Xi'an was worse than Beijing and everywhere you went it smelled like coal. My jacket I wore still reaks of it!
PANYU
This is where we went for New Years. Its about a 3 hour drive north of Hong Kong. We stayed in a really nice Villa that belongs to one of my bosses. Its in the middle of no-where however, I dont think many gwylos have ventured to this part. We went into the town center one day and we were stared at by everyone. It was really uncomfortable. People would be pointing at you speaking something and you had no idea what you were saying. We really had to watch our belongings here, luckily every thing went OK.
Well that's it from here - back at work today. Oh my apartment is Freezing. It dipped down to 4 degrees last night and my apartment must have been around freezing - i could see my breath as I watched TV wearing full winter gear!!! The
humidity in the air makes 4 degrees here fell colder than at home - at least that's my excuse.
Write and let me know how your holidays went (if your not sleeping from the length of this update!).
later guys.
JIM
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