Advertisement
Published: April 21st 2008
Edit Blog Post
A lot of the cities in China proved to be a bit of a disappointment for us really. Beijing and Shanghai especially didn't live up to what we had in our imagination; oriental flair, lanterns lining the streets, noodles in street carts ... a lot of that was missing and the city as a major world city lacked something and felt a bit awkward.
Stepping into Hong Kong though, we were struck by familiarity straight away, and it felt good! Its modern a modern Chinese capitalist city, with all the hallmarks of a typical western big city, and it still incorporates Chinese culture, with a post colonial vibe.
The first night was also our last night with our tour group, and our guide, Lilian, took us out for our last night for dinner. She got a little emotional bless her, it was her first ever group, she did some things that were a little bit weird organisation wise but nothing went seriously wrong and all went well really.
We only had one full day in Hong Kong so we had to make the most of it, so of course we went up to Victoria Peak and looked at the
Jackie Chan and Me!
OK, not quite, but this is in the 'Avenue of the Stars' in Hong Kong views over the city's skyscrapers, then we went into the centre of the business district to buy a new camera for Claire, she got one of those Lumix ones, and I'm very jealous because its really good!! In the evening we went to the river bank and watched Hong Kong's famous lights show, which is supposedly the biggest one in the world, looking over the skyscrapers whose lights dance with the classical music being played. It was kind of surreal, but pretty cool too.
After that it was to a Irish Pub to have some drinks with everyone (though by drinkS i mean DRINK, because a pint was nearly 5 quid!). So it was sad to say good bye to the group, but we'll probably see some of them along the way at some point.
By this point we had decided that we were going to go to Malaysia before Thailand, primarily because it was cheaper to go overland from Singapore, and we are now travelling with three girls from Brighton, Beth, Sophie and Georgia, who were in our tour group who we get on really well with, and are probably going to travel round Thailand with them
too.
So on to Singapore!! There's not much to tell you about Singapore really, its a very modern, clean, well run country, city and island, very cosmipolitan with lots of business men milling around too, mainly on business, but most of the time looking more like they were on a weekend away from their wives and they were going to use it to their maximum if you get me?!
Singapore has a reputation for being boring, and in some respects, it is. There isn't much to do there, but we had our Singapore Sling, visited Raffles Hotel, did the shopping in Orchard Road, walked along the river bank and ate a lot. The place we were staying, Sleepy Sam's Guesthouse, was really cool though, and had a really good backpacker vibe about it, the dorms were homely, there were big cushions downstairs to sit on with sofas, tvs, dvds, and computers to use.
On Saturday we got a bus to Kuala Lumpur, it was a 7 hour bus ride but it flew by, I've just started reading the Kite Runner which is an amazing book, so I got stuck into that, most of the others read too,
and of course Claire fell asleep for a lot of it!
We weren't too impressed by Kuala Lumpur to be honest, its alright, we're staying in Chinatown next to the market which sells every knock off imaginable, and a lot of them look EXACTLY the same. Top marks to the people who make these 'genuine copies' as the salesman always tell us.
Yesterday we just went shopping really, there isn't much else to do here again! But today the Olympic Torch is passing through KL, so we're definitely going to go and see that, I was a bit disappointed I missed it pass through London.
We leave to go to the Perinthian Islands tomorrow night, which are on the East Coast of Malaysia, they are supposed to be really beautiful and it will be the first time we get to just sit on a beach so we're pretty excited. After that its on to Krabi which is on the West coast of Thailand, hopefully we'll update the blog when we get there.
If you are reading these blogs often, you can subscribe to them and then you'll always know when we've published a new one because it will email you.
Hope everyone is alright, takecare
Rich and Claire x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.094s; Tpl: 0.025s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0578s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Becks
non-member comment
WOW who'd a thought it!!!!!
Mate you never told us your alter ego was the one that is jakie chan, either that or he is your hand twin, you should track him down and make money out of that!!!! LOL!!!!!!!