There and Back Again...

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Lou: Well Mark left you in Hong Kong, where we found it impossible to leave! Meant to stay only 4 days and ended up staying 10. Hong Kong was such a nice break from China - people didn't stare at us, shove us out of the way, steal our seats, hit us in the face with their umbrellas or try to rip us off at every turn, and everyone spoke English! It was also really nice to see some non-Chinese faces, as there are big Indian, Pakistani and West African communities in Hong Kong, being from such a multicultural city back home it is a bit weird when everyone you see is Chinese!

We spent most of our time in Hong Kong in D-16, an Indian restaurant Mark and Nikki had recommended to us. This has got to be the best recommendation we've had. Now as Mark and Nikki had explained to us, it would not be to everyone's taste, it was in block D floor 16 of Chungking Mansions, in a tiny room and if you ordered rice it came in a washing up bowl! But we absolutely loved it, the food was unbelievable and the guys who worked there so friendly, we went there every day.

When we weren't eating we also went up The Peak for some cool views over the city, went to see the Big Buddha, wandered round the markets and temples, went to the Science, History and Art museums and joined a crowd watching Michael Jackson videos outside a shop! We eventually managed to drag ourselves away and headed back to Guangzhou, where we went to a Couchsurfing party. This was a really good laugh, we met lots of cool people, Ravi the host was great and put on a spread of Indian food and got everyone up to bhangra dance.

From Guangzhou we headed to Guilin, a city on the Li River. We went to the Seven Stars Park there, which was beautiful in terms of the scenery, but there was a zoo inside which was really depressing, the animals were kept in such tiny cages in poor conditions. It's such a shame the Chinese take such care over making the park look lovely, but treat the animals dreadfully. We also saw some locals trying to put their hands through the tiger cage and roar at it; even after over a month in China that the people can be so stupid and unthoughtful amazes me.

After Guilin we went to Yangshuo which was very touristy as a town, but the surrounding scenery was amazing. We went swimming in the Yulong River one day, and were joined by a lovely Welsh family and their 3 young children. We had only meant to be having a quick dip but ended up playing with them for a few hours! We then hiked back to Yangshuo along the river, which was a stunning walk. We stayed in a really nice little guesthouse and even had a DVD player so managed to watch some of the hundreds we bought in Vietnam! Unfortunately the guesthouse owner was called Julie which meant I had Mark singing 'Me Julie' all the time for 3 days...

Our last stop in China was Chengdu, where we went to see Giant Pandas in the Breeding Sanctuary there, they are very cute! We were hoping to arrange a trip to Tibet here, but it was so expensive, and took so long to arrange that we would have had to extend our visas so we decided to give it a miss. Instead we headed to Macau for a couple of days, where we stayed with Suraj in his very plush apartment! After some of the rooms in China, coming to stay at Suraj's was like heaven! We had an amazing view over Macau from our room, our own bathroom with a powerful shower, and he even said to help ourselves to a big bar of Dairy Milk! Macau itself was really cool, we wandered round the old Portuguese colonial buildings and also went to look round The Venetian casino which has it's own version of St Mark's Square and the Grand Canal inside - crazy!

After Macau we found ourselves back in... you've guessed it... Bangkok! 5th time this trip now, but the quickest and easiest place to get our visas for India. We only stayed as long as our visas took, met up with Natt again and then headed back to Malaysia. We spent a day in Penang, where really we just went back so we could eat at Chicken Kapitan again! We met a lovely couple, Rach and Matt in the airport, who saved us when our card wouldn't work in the ATM by paying for our taxi. We repaid them by introducing them to the wonder of Chicken Kapitan! We headed to the Perhentian islands for a few relaxing days, where we also met up with Sarah, Leah, Claire and her friend Bec who she is traveling with. Was really nice to catch up, might I suggest all future Roundhay reunions take place in Malaysia!

Our boat journey back to the mainland, however, was awful! The sea was really rough, we had to get a little fishing boat out to the speed boat, which went OK at our end, but we went to pick up some other people from another bay and they had got knocked off their boat and had to swim to the speed boat! Then we set off, and the boat went so fast over the very choppy sea that we were getting thrown all over and wave after wave was coming into the boat and hitting us straight in the face. We got absolutely soaked, it was like being on the set of A Perfect Storm, minus George Clooney! Thankfully we made it to the mainland in one piece, just very soggy, and then had fun trying to dry all our stuff under hand dryers before our flight to India! You'll be pleased to know we are now both in India and dry!
Until next time....

Louise and Mark xxx

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