Advertisement
Published: February 24th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Since our last update we have seen an entire spectrum of city life. We left off in Perth, Western Australia, with our beloved camper-van! We had a great couple of days in the Margret River area, where we went on a wine tour, ate some bush tukka (native plants and animals, including grubs and Kangaroo!), enjoyed more great sand and surf, and toured a cave 43ft below the ground. We ended up back in Mandurah at the Milo's on our way up to Perth, and were treated to a great home-cooked meal, can't thank them enough for their generous hospitality! Then came the end of an era, we headed to Perth and got rid of our van after 3,500 kms driven in 17 days. We had a few days to enjoy Perth before heading out on the real start of our journey, into Asia!
We arranged a 2 day stopover in Kuala Lumpur on our way to Hong Kong and we made the best of it. KL is an amazing mix of lifestyles, religions, and food. From the lavish malls with their high-end shops at the Petronas Towers to the markets of Chinatown and Little India, you can find just
about everything here. We headed up the Petronas Towers (the tallest in the world when they were constructed) for some great views of the city, and spent the rest of the day checking out the various markets, shops, and a huge bird sanctuary. We didn't have to go far to find a market as our hotel was situated directly in the middle of the large market in Chinatown, which meant anytime we wanted to go in or out we had to navigate through a bustling, smelly, dirty street with hundreds of people yelling various things like "hey man, you want a copy watch, tailored suit?", "hey big wallet, I give you best price" or to Hawley "Hey gorgous, you need a handbag or sunglasses?" You can buy just about anything here for cheap, even dvd's to movies that aren't even out yet! I bought some "Gucci" sunglasses for $10, what a deal! Our first meal in KL was a success, as it only cost us about $2 and the food was good, but finding somewhere to eat and trying to figure what the menu said was a little challenging. It was a small Indian restaurant where, after some puzzled looks
and several hand gestures, we managed to get some food.
On our second day we took a city bus out to the Batu caves, a very important Hindu temple and religious sight. They were pretty amazing, but unfortunately had suffered the same fate as most side streets in KL, they were dirty and smelly and had garbage blowing around, which some monkeys were feeding on while posing for pictures for all the tourists. We were up at the crack of dawn the next morning to catch our flight to Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is great, we couldn't get enough of the never-ending skyline of Hong Kong island. It was such a contrast to life in KL where everything is chaos. Hong Kong is run like a well oiled machine, from the transit system to the traffic, everything seems to flow. The only downside was getting a Hotel, at the Chungking Mansions. After we had already booked our room we read in our city guide that the Mansions were somewhere to see, but didn't list is as somewhere to stay! It is the cheap place to stay in Hong Kong which draws all kinds of people, it has a
mall below selling various goods, and 5 sections of apartment buildings above. There are an estimated 4,000 people living there, and our guide mentioned "it is full of crime and the odd body turns up." That being said we never had any major problems, just had to put up with the stares we got going in and out, and again people trying to sell us stuff or show us a room to stay in. Once we were out of there though it was all good, we spent a day going through some of the many museums (every Wednesday all museums are free), including the Hong Kong National History Meseum, which was very interesting. Hawley got to do plenty of shopping, and we took a tram ride up to the peak of Hong Kong Island during which the clouds cleared and we got some nice pictures. We ate plenty of local food, and enjoyed the various local markets, and ended the night with the Island light show which happens every night.
Our last day in Hong Kong, Hawley persuaded me to go to Hong Kong Disney Land, the smallest of all Disney Land parks. We spent a few hours there
and had a good time. We got our pictures taken with all the locals, and went on some good rides. Just a couple minutes from there by train we went to the Ngong Ping gondola, where we had great views of the airport (built on a man-made island) and Tian Tan Buddha, a massive outdoor shrine.
The last couple of days we have been on a long and cramped journey to Vietnam, which started with a train ride to Fo Shan in Southern China. When we arrived there we had no Chinese Money (only Hong Kong dollars) and we couldn't find an ATM or money exchange place at the train terminal. No one spoke English and we had no money or food! After standing around in the terminal for a while trying to figure out what to do someone working there approached us and looked at our tickets, I then tried to ask about exchanging money, but that didn't go very well. He motioned for us to wait there and a few minutes later a group of people had accumulated around us (I don't think many foreigners traveled through these parts), and finally a young girl came over who
spoke some English and got someone there to exchange a HK$20 for 16 Yuan, fairly close to the exchange rate! That gave us about $3 for food, so we bought some noodles, which ended up being breakfast lunch and dinner that day. We took an overnight train to PingXiang, then befriended a French guy to share the cost of a Cyclo (a motorbike with a carriage) to the Vietnam border, and a taxi to the nearest town. The taxi driver dropped us off in a back alley where his friend offered bus trips to Hanoi. We agreed and after paying about twice as much as the locals on the bus we started the 3 hour trip to Hanoi in a cramped minibus. We finally made it to Hanoi after making several unscheduled stops on the highway to drop off packages (many of these buses do various types of trafficking from the Chinese border), and we celebrated with a dinner, a few beers, a shower and a good sleep. Good to go for Vietnam!
Joe and Hawley
Advertisement
Tot: 0.051s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0294s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb