China

---

Ok, so after our India entry a confused Ed asked how we managed to get to India via Hong Kong. It was apparent that an update was needed for China so we set aside a day to blog (and chill..)

Our Itinerary

Beijing - 3 nights

Overnight train to X'ian (12 hours ish)

X'ian - 3 nights

Overnight train to Chengdu (14 hrs)

Chengdu - 2/3 nights

Evening flight to Guilin (90 mins)

1 night in Guilin (to sleep) then bus to Yangshuo (1 hour)

Yangshuo - 3 nights

Overnight train to Shenzhen (12 hrs)

Walk to Hong Kong (Lo Wu border).

Yes, I said walk to Hong Kong! Shenzhen is on the border. It was the quickest and easiest option to get to Hong Kong from Yangshuo. You don't even go outside in Shenzhen as the border crossing is linked to the station. It was all very easy.

Highlights

Beijing
....is a cool city, very fast-paced but very cool. First thing we established was that our elementary grasp of mandarin would be met with guffaws of laughter wherever we went. But hell, at least we tried! Weather was scorching hot but we managed to get out and about during the daytime to see a few of the essential sites....

Tiananmen Square - was a big square. We refused to visit Mao's mausoleum on principle (the Commie Party embalmed him for public show despite his express wish for this not to happen). Later found out that Ho Chi Minh has a similar one in Vietnam so we could've racked up a "Big 3" sighting of dead-but-embalmed-ex-communist-leaders (with Lenin in Moscow already ticked off the list). Oh well, next time. This is also where we got our first experience of......

Being a Bona-Fide Celebrity - as soon as we stepped off the tube at Tiananmen Square the stardom began......"can we have our photograph taken with you please?". Clearly the capital's Chinese are still getting used to the site of western-man (and woman). At first we decided to take a return photo of every person that asked us to pose with them. We gave up on this after about request number 10 in the space of an hour. We also established that the real draw, contrary to previous experience, was Graham rather than Kerry! Ahaa, the Chinese know true star quality when they see it 😊 Apparently mesmerised by his flowing golden locks, Graham was followed around by groups of school-children and adults alike for long periods of the day. This soon stopped after my $4 haircut the next day.

Forbidden City - was pretty impressive, mostly because of it's sheer scale and architecture. Was hard to fully appreciate it though because of the swarms of Saturday tourists, the heat and the crowds of people surrounding us trying to get a photo of Graham's hair.

Eating Out - hmmm hmmmm, cheap Chinese food everywhere, gotta love that. We ventured off the beaten track into one of Beijing's Hutangs (where the locals live and eat). Was an experience! The locals found us hilarious (as usual). Soon established that, when eating in China you should list what you'd like to order first, then halve it for fear of grossly over-ordering and looking like a complete fool.

Trekking on the Great Wall - we heard that this Great Wall-thing was worth seeing so decided to pay it a visit. Drove out to Jinsinling, a less touristy part, and then trekked 10km along the wall to Simatai. In the China sun it was hard work (lots of climbing up vertical steps followed by descending vertical inclines, etc etc) and think it took something like 3 hours to complete but needless to say the views were stunning. Also ran into our new best mates, Kim and Brian, whom we had shared 5 days in the Mongolian outback with and had also randomly shared a train compartment with on the journey from Ulan Bator to Beijing. Oh how we laughed! It wasn't the last time we saw them either........

Pole Dancers - Male and Female - no trip to Beijing would be complete without an evening in a karoake bar in Sanlitun. We were somewhat surprised to find the karoake acts supported by a very, ahem, athletic-but-wearing-very-tight-leather-shorts-and-not-much-else (draw your own conclusions, folks) male pole dancer. He was, in fairness, a f*cking amazing pole-dancer! much better than his (very good-looking) female counterpart who invariably drew the lion's share of applause. Eye-opening.

X'ian (BI - 0.8ish)
Now first thing's first, we stayed in one helluva hostel here. My god it was nice! Divided into 3 sunlit squares, with fish and birds, open air sofas to recline on, a cafe, an underground bar....you name it, it had it. Took a trip to see the Terracotta Warriors, which were interesting (in fact, the story about how they were discovered and why they were created is more interesting that the site itself).

Kerry has asked me to mention the nice, air-conditioned KFC that we went to at the Terracotta Warrior site, please don't ask me why.

Xi'an itself had some pretty buildings (most notably the Drum Tower). Evenings were spent in the hostel bar where we met a few interesting characters (shout out to Gareth and Dan, wherever you are), including an incredibly obnoxious basketball talent scout (Quote; "You're American? Thank GOD!!! These guys speak English but it's great to finally meet some Americans! Can I buy you a drink?" - I kid you not) and learnt to play that dice game that all Chinese seem to play but we don't know the name of (Perudo, maybe?).
Hangovers galore (well for one of us at least, I'll let you guess which one).

Chengdu (BI - 0.8ish)
Pandas (see Kerry's entry) and lying around the hostel feeling ill (Graham). Pretty miserable really. Tried some local Sichuan hot-pot (a little disappointing, but I think our restaurant choice was poor).

Whilst walking around town, also witnessed what we assume to be China's version of "Britain's Got Talent". Presumably it's called "China's Got People Willing to Act Out Improvised Comedy or Drama Sketches in Front of a Panel and a Camera in a Glass Box in the Town Centre Whilst the Public Look On", but I could be wrong.

Yangshuo (BI - 0.75ish)

1. Li River Driftage.

This was extremely funny, quite mental and at times seemingly dangerous. After an hour bus ride we were dropped off with a load of other tourists (all Chinese) for a bit of rafting. We dropped off our bags with dry clothes for safekeeping and squeezed into another bus to get to the top of the river. Once there we were given helmets, life vests, knee and elbow pads then hopped into a rubber dinghy for 2 where we queued up to be shoved over a waterfall then into the rapids with no paddle. Brilliant. The boat kept spinning around, bashing against the rocks and other dinghys and then every now and then there was a water pool at the top of a waterfall, such as the first one where we queued up to get shoved over. See photos and possible video (if I can get it to load). Every so often we'd see an empty dinghy or people stranded, other times we'd get stuck on the edges or at the bottom of a waterfall until another dinghy barged us out or we were pulled out. The Chinese tourists were brilliant, there were many water fights, offerings of random fruits that had been found floating and losts of hellos and even some high fives.

2. Cycling 15km to Dragon Bridge, then taking a bamboo raft back downstream.

It was baking hot the whole time we were in Yangshuo so it was lovely to get a bit of wind in our faces and cycle in the countryside. We were smothered in factor 50 but still got burned, though not too badly and we didn't notice till after. We had a map but the roads weren't really marked so it wasn't much use but a friendly old-ish bloke, also on a bike, said Dragon Bridge to us and pointed us in the right direction. When we stopped at a little village shop (someone's house) for a drink he pulled up a little while after then shouted to us to come back when we'd went the wrong way. He seemed to wait for us at times to make sure we were ok but was very unobtrusive the whole time. There was a minute of confusion (well, blatant doubt and mistrust our part) when he called us back to take a tiny bumpy road into a field but we put our doubts aside and were at the riverside within a few minutes. We were tired and baking hot so stopped for a paddle dip and the bloke carried on without us. It was a glorious spot, just deep enough and at a small waterfall.

Of course, as we suspected, when we arrived at Dragon Bridge our helpful chappy was there and gave us a price for a raft and as it seemed quite reasonable and he'd been so helpful Graham only haggled the price down a tiny bit and our man punted us back downstream with our bikes on the back.

The bamboo raft ride was the complete opposite of the river driftage. The river was calm & peaceful, just a couple of tiny waterfalls where we got slightly splashed but delightfully so, and we were sat on a couple of chairs with a sun parasol to shade us.

It became a little more chaotic towards the end as we approached a Chinese tourist spot where dozens of bamboo rafts were sporting Chinese tourists wearing life vests (! no idea why !). They were being punted up and down a small stretch then, down a mini waterfall where there were a few floating photograph cabins snapping their decent as a souvenir. Weird.

Drama!

So this is was our BIG drama in China. There were a couple of other incidents with slight drama but not worth mentioning...

After successfully booking our own tickets we thought the rest would be easy. Chinese train stations are manic. It's a wonder that there are any people left in the city the number that ram themselves into every space at the station. We booked our own because we'd left it to the last minute, the hostel booking fee was a bit steep & we'd missed the in-town booking office by a few minutes. It wasn't so bad. We asked the guard which of the 20 or so counters was English speaking then waited in line for about 30 mins.

Ah, but no - the drama was to come! So, we left the hostel an hour before our train was due to leave, jumped into a taxi that had conveniently pulled up outside to drop someone off and started to relax. Then when we got close to the station the driver had to drop us off a street away because the main road was closed off. No problem, it wasn't far, we'll just walk. Outside of the taxi we found that the road was blocked off all around the train station and police were stopping anyone from crossing the road. No one was allowed in or out so we just had to wait - or so we gathered from the actions of a Chinese couple that I'd (Kerry) spotted that were getting the same train as us (I asked to see their ticket to check the time of their train and got lucky). The police didn't speak English so we couldn't ask ourselves.

So, with 30 mins to go the road was opened and we legged it through the crowds to get through security before the pile up - thanks again to quietly watching the couple. We were in the station looking at the departure board with 20 mins to spare. Home free you'd think! We couldn't fathom the board out so we headed for the soft seat departure lounge as in Beijing they had English announcements there. So.. long and short of it: after some confusion going up and down stairs and to the wrong platform we finally found out for sure that we were going from platform 2, through waiting room 2 with 10 mins to spare...

Unfortunately, by that time, the whole place was in chaos and there was a solid wall of passengers and baggage between us and the "waiting room" about 50 meters away. So we politely shuffled along with the crowd for about 2 minutes until we stopped moving. Then I (Kerry) realised that most of them were waiting for other platforms and started showing my ticket to people saying I need to get over there and shouldered my way through the crowd, literally shoving people out of the way. NEVER have I been so glad to have a rucksack than in those few minutes. The poor others with unwieldy luggage stood no chance!

We got on the train with seconds to spare after a final 200 metre dash to the platform. Of course the train hung around for an extra 10 mins or so but we'd have definitely missed it if we'd waited politely for people to shuffle up!

Low points

Graham's cold, still ongoing 😞

---

Photos

Beijing - Male Pole Dancer
Ooer missus!

Teracotta Warriors
Oops! This is why they're reluctant to excavate the remaining sites..

Xi'an hostel bar - new friends
Left to right:
Dan, Graham, Kerry, Gareth

Chengdu - typical example of over-ordering!
Although this was because we couldn't read the menu and so chose a set meal each. Evidently the set meal was to be shared.. How were we supposed to know? It was only one pound fifty!

Chengdu - feeding fish at a fairground..
.. with a baby bottle. Obviously!

Yangshuo - Kerry expertly cycles with one hand and takes a photo with the other
....almost home at this point.

Comments

[mam]

really enjoyed that blog pics are great you both look very healthy and happy we are all watching with great interest. x