Hong Kong

On Friday night we caught an overnight bus from Yangshou to Shenzhen (very near the Hong Kong border). Unfortunately a combination of dodgy sweet and sour chicken and rough roads meant that I was one of the dozen people on the bus that threw up at some stage during the night. Luckily I was sick in the bathroom at one of the stops - other people weren't so lucky and had to use the cheap sick bags on the bus. We walked across the border into Hong Kong and found a cheap place to stay on Nathan Road in Kowloon near the Tsimshatsui MTR station.

Yesterday we took the Star ferry across to Hong Kong Island and rode the Peak Tram up to the lookout. Today we were scheduled to go to Macau but I misjudged the price somewhat. It was going to cost close to US$100 for both of us to go so we've decided to stay in Hong Kong and just walk around the city and plan our route to the airport for our early morning flight to Manila tomorrow.

On the Star Ferry

Hong Kong

China has beaten our expectations so leaving has got us in two minds. We are both looking forward to the Philippines and relaxing on the beach for a week or so.
 

The view from the top of the Peak Tram

Ping' An and Yangshou

A few days ago we caught a series of buses to the small village of Ping' An and spent the night in among the beautiful rice terraces. The scenery was breathtaking and it was so quiet. We only stayed one night but could easily have stayed much longer.

When we stepped off the last bus, we were in the middle of a swarm of dragon flies, large amber colored ones. We had to pay a small fee to enter the Long Ji terrace. Long Ji Titan is the Dragon's backbone rice terrace. We ended up choosing a hostel at the top of the village. After a climb up limestone slab stairs to the very highest hostel/cabin we were only a matter of five minutes from the top of the mountain and a very scenic view point. Our window overlooked the river valley below and, unlike the rest of China, we couldn't hear a sound.

 

The worlds most beautiful rice terraces - the Dragons Backbone in Ping' An

 While chatting with other guests, our hostess informed us that dinner was ready. Much to our pleasure, for 8 Yuan (US$1) we had a beautiful dinner of potato with garlic, sautéed eggplant, sautéed squash with garlic, tofu, scrambled egg with fresh mint and rice. It was served family style with only one uninvited guest, what looked like the worlds largest mosquito. Next day in the cool of the morning we walked to the view point for some photos. Sara returned to the hostel, and Ian hiked on for a while in the mid-morning sun. The walk down to the mini-bus was much quicker than the walk up and three buses later we were back in Yangshuo.

After the character building train ride from Yichang, we spent several days in a little village called Yangshuo. The heart of the town is lined with small two story buildings and is for foot traffic only. Street level are small shops and one cafe after another. Surrounding the city center are massive limestone pinnacles, and some close to town they light up at night. It was nice to have a proper meal and a hot shower, but Ian's dinner of snake was not to my liking.

Getting ready for a snake dinner with Faye & Alan with our tour guide Tina

The limestone pinnacles around Yangshou

We arranged to go for a mountain bike ride to Moon Hill with a guide named Tina. During the height of the afternoon heat she took us to her uncle's house to get out of the sun. While we had tea, she was showing us how to write our names in Chinese characters and when Ian asked her to write his, she giggled and said that the characters would be the same as her Chinese name, Ying. We stopped by a small river to ride a bamboo raft to a 1000 year old banyan tree. The driver asked if Ian wanted to try using the bamboo pole to steer for a while, and it ended up that the driver sat next to me for the whole trip, because Ian enjoyed driving so much.

The bamboo raft trip near Yangshou

The next morning Ian joined Tina and another tour group for a river cruise to see Nine Horse Hill. He said he only saw 5 horses in the hill and when we asked some of the locals most have only saw 2 or 3 of the horses. Apparently it helps to smoke a little to be able to see all nine horses.

The river cruise to Nine Horse Hill

Chinese Train Torture

We arrived at Yichang at 10pm and our train left from the nearby station at 3:21 in the morning. It was to be an 18 hour journey and I had made a grave miscalculation by reserving the hard seat carriage. This is a carriage that seats 110 people but traditionally houses 200 plus some livestock and poultry... and the toilets are no flush-squat style. Oh so pleasant.
Boarding was no big bother, but we did witness two women fight (physically) over a window seat. The little grandmother who sat first and had the ticket, didn't want to give up her seat to the big mean woman, whom pulled and screamed at the tiny grandmother for 10 minutes until she was yanked onto the floor. Heart-breaking but nothing we could do. So the little grandmother, saving face took her seat next to the brooding mean woman, with grace.
We lasted about 7 hours in the hard seats before Sara had had enough. She'd taken all the spitting and smoking she could handle and walked with the phrase book to the conductor to see about upgrading to a hard sleeper (has a limit of passengers and everyone gets a bed). This required Sara to go from carriage 14 (in the back) to carriage 4 to see about paying for the upgrade.

In Sara's words:  I didn't realize how good we had it. Our carriage only had 140 people, and each one I passed through held more and more. Lining the aisle and standing in the bathroom. I stepped on one rooster, and just missed a kitten. It was all elbows and knees, since I was the only white foreign woman in these compartments, and in many cases the only foreign woman many of these people had seen. Women didn't want to move thinking I was after their spot and men didn't want to move for obvious reasons, and when they did it wasn't much.
Once I had arranged the upgrade, my guide/conductor went back and told Ian he could start moving forward, but with the language barrier he didn't tell him how far forward. So on my way back to 14 from 4 I apprised him of the new location, and continued on my way to retrieve my one big pack as Ian was able to carry the rest. He was lucky that we had a stop during this time because he was able to exit the train and run across the platform and re-board and avoid the teaming masses. I on the other hand had to start my third journey across the train, this time with my pack. This is where it started getting funny. I had a couple of I love you's, one offer to help "How can I help you Madam" was what he said. He was so sweet and probably learned it from a movie, but unfortunately he didn't have the magic ability to teleport me forward 8 carriages. And one man did swipe the chance to pat me on the bottom. I knocked a couple over when I turned with surprise and said "Hey now!"
Finally after 90 minutes and three trips, the $12 USD to upgrade both our tickets paid off. We had some rest, a good meal and were in a clean hotel by 10pm that night. It was a character builder, and a valuable lesson. An $8 train ticket isn't worth the trouble if you are traveling for more than a couple of hours. The upside, I am much more swift in a crowd than I was before.
Not to be misunderstood. It wasn't so horrible that I wish we didn't do it. Simply, next time I would do it differently. It was one of those times where we had higher expectations, and it took 4 days to get there. Plus English on the tour would have been a perk.
Once we arrived in our destination of Yangshuo - 10 feet out of the bus station we had a pleasant surprise, and spotted an English couple, Faye and Alan. We had met them in Xi'an and enjoyed their company and after a long couple of days looked forward to our stay in Yangshuo.

Xian to Yichang

A CHINESE RIVER CRUISE
After a really nice time in Xi'an we took a long, 30 hour overnight train journey through Chengdu in the Sichuan Province to Municipality of Chongqing and the capital Chongqing City. On the train we met three Swedish people in the compartment next to us. One of them had spent a year in New Zealand attending secondary school in my old home town, Wainuiomata, so we spent a few hours dropping names and finding out all the common people we knew. At the end of a long journey we were greeted at the station by a member of the travel agent whom we had booked our river cruise with and were quickly taken to their offices and briefed on the logistics of the next few days. They also booked a cheap hotel for us and drove us right to the front door. For a cheap hotel it wasn't at all that bad and if it wasn't for the smog we would have had a grand view of the Yangtze from our room on the 13th floor.
After a good nights sleep we thought we should explore the city since we didn't have to be at the boat terminal until about 6pm. Chongqing is one of those anomalies in China - there are no bicycles. There are no bicycles because the city is full of steps and the city is full of steps because it is squeezed on a narrow hilly junction between the Yangtze and Jialing rivers. The city is also full of porters called Bang Bang Jun - the Stick Stick Army. They haul loads on bamboo poles balanced across their shoulders - anything from baskets of fruit to kitchen appliances. If you want anything moved, just call one of the Bang Bang Jun. I found the city very appealing although the heat was oppressive and the hills didn't make it easy. We spent the majority of the afternoon trying without success to find an internet cafe. We actually found two but the first one had just experienced a server crash and was closed indefinitely, and the second one was just closed, for good.

One of the faithful Bang Bang Jun

Late in the afternoon we battled the crowds and boarded our boat which was to be our home for the next two days. We had decided to travel 3rd class on the knowledge that the main difference between the classes was the size of vermin that invested your room - mosquito's in 1st class, spiders in 2nd, cockroaches in 3rd, rats in 4th and everything mentioned above plus chickens, cats, dogs, geese and possibly snakes in 5th class. Actually 5th class was just a plastic seat in the bowels of the boat which we only had to pass through on our way on and off the boat. After the typical mayhem when boarding any form of public transport we found our space on the boat which was an eight berth room on the starboard side. Our roommates consisted of 5 Chinese men and one angry German who hated everything about the cruise. It wasn't a pretty room and it wasn't a pretty boat but this was a Chinese tour boat and there wasn't much we could do about it. Thankfully I had scored the bed closest to the air conditioner and while my bed was ice cold the rest of the cabin was like an oven - on the second night with the air conditioner on full, it was 90F on the top bunks.

We both experienced a very poor first nights sleep but I had to be up at 5am for an early morning tour of Fengdu - one of the many towns to be flooded shortly by the Three Gorges Dam. Sara and the German decided to skip the tour in the hopes of catching up on some sleep. I met a Taiwanese man on the tour and he very graciously translated much of what the tour guide was saying otherwise I would have been quite bored. In the afternoon we both sat on the top deck of the boat and watched the towns and villages roll by. The Three Gorges Dam is by far the largest hydroelectric dam in the world, its wall roughly six times the length the Hoover Dam's, and the twenty-six turbines will produce 18,100 megawatts of electricity. Along the banks of the Yangtze, especially near major towns or temples, huge signs with red numbers mark the elevation above sea level. When the reservoir is finally at full capacity in 2009 the water level will reach 177m above sea level - towns like Fengdu currently sit at about 40m above sea level. It is mind boggling to see all these towns, the majestic scenery, the ancient tombs and know that within a decade they will all be lost below the reservoir. The upper Yangtze will become Lake Yangtze and the beautiful Three Gorges will never be the same.

The upper Yangtze

The reason for this boat trip was to see the gorges before they become flooded. To say that there are only three is a misleading - there are three massive gorges, the longest of which is 80km long, but there are numerous other gorges including the three little gorges which are not at long but just as dramatic. On the second morning we were woken at 6am after a much better sleep (we had switched bunks) and packed into smaller boats for a trip up the Daning River to see the little gorges. For both of us this was the highlight of the cruise, seeing the dramatic scenery close up and being able to sit at the front of the boat in the hot sun. The scenery was breathtaking. In the afternoon we drifted slowly down the Yangtze passed the new dam, through the lock system and into Yichang. But arriving at 10pm at night and a 3am train journey looming, things were about to take a turn for the worse.
 

Xian, China

The early morning train to Beijing was a good one - about 36 hours in total. At the border between Mongolia and China we stopped for about 4 hours so that the wheels could be changed on each of the carriages - the gap between the tracks in China differs from the rest of the trans-Siberian route so we watched as each carriage was lifted and a fresh set of wheels was rolled under to replace them.

Once in Beijing we walked a short distance from the train station to the Youth Hostel and checked in for 4 nights. After the compulsory shower we stalked out the local area and realised we were not much more than a mile from Tiananmen Square. We saw close to a million bicycles en route and possibly one or two of them obeyed the correct traffic laws. Because of an arson attack a few weeks earlier all of the Internet Cafe's in Beijing were closed until further notice - hence no messages from China until now.

The following day was drizzling so we only ventured out to the Wangfujing shopping district and around to the Workers Stadium in the east for a late lunch. By late afternoon we caught the metro to Tiananmen Square and were amazed by the size of it. We didn't do much in the way of sightseeing but we needed to plan the best way to spend the remaining three days.

Next morning we went straight to see Mao Zedong in his mausoleum - it's much bigger than Lenin's in Moscow but you can only see him from the neck up - he didn't look nearly as good as Lenin but then again he lived about 20 years longer than his little Russian comrade. The mausoleum is right in the middle of Tiananmen Sq and after wandering around for a little while we entered the Forbidden City just to the north. The Forbidden City has a fantastic display of ancient buildings and the audio tour is narrated by former 007, Roger Moore.

The compulsory Mao photo at the entrance to the Forbidden City

After 3 or so hours inside the ancient walls we headed further north to Jingshan Park and climbed to the top for the best view of the city. As good as the vantage point was, we were now at least 2km from the nearest metro station so we chose to continue heading north until we found one, but not after checking out some of the hutongs (alleys) along the way. For dinner, Sara had chicken and I had the scorpion - deep fried.

Jingshan Park

Thursday we were up super early to catch the 3 hour bus to Jinsangling about 100km north east of Beijing near the Hebei province. Once there we hiked a little way uphill until we found the Great Wall (it wasn't hard to miss, after all you can see it from space), from there we headed east towards Simatai Village about 9km away. This section is known as the wild wall because of the slopes (70 degrees in places) and the cliffs. The walk took us just over 3 hours past about 30 towers some of which looked brand new and others that were spectacular in their disrepair. After the hard work we looked back at what we had just walked over and both agreed that we had accomplished something very special. I would certainly do it again.

The Great Wall of China - wild wall

On our last day in Beijing we had a few hours to kill before catching the train. We walked down to a market area nearby and Sara got a Louis Vuitton handbag, I got some North Face gear and we both got some new clothes. By 6pm that night we were on the train to Xi'an with, what seemed like, half of the population of Beijing. There were no fewer than 66 people on our carriage - compared with 9 on the 3 day journey from Moscow to Irkutsk.
We were greeted off the train at 7am the next morning by the friendly youth hostel staff who helped me book our out-bound train to Chongqing for Monday afternoon on a soft sleeper (only 4 people per compartment with a door) then we quickly checked into our room before being whisked out the door on a full day tour. With little sleep and next to no food we visited the nearby Terracotta Warriors, Black Horse Mountain, Qin Shihuang Ling's Tomb (he's the guy who demanded the warriors be placed in his tomb), and a couple of Goose Pagoda's.

The walk up to Shihuang Ling's Tomb

Tomorrow we are going to hire bikes and cycle around the old city walls and then visit the local zoo to see the Panda's. We also have to spend some time doing some washing. That's all for this edition.

The army of the Terracotta Warriors