Ed and Mary

Went to the mountain the next morning. It was miserable! It rained constantly for the whole time we were up there and the fog made visibility really bad. We couldn’t see anything up there and were soaked through so instead of the 6 hours trekking around up there we left after just over 2 and a half! Took the cablecar back down to the bottom and bussed it back to the town, which I’ve discovered isn’t actually called Huang Shan at all but doesn’t really matter!

After we came back we decided to check if Air India would be able to check our bags onto our Qantas flight so rang them to ask. Much to our suprise we were told our flight had been cancelled on the 11th! After much scrambling and panicing we found out that we’d been put on a later Thai Airways flight to Bangkok at 5.25pm which would get in for 9pm. That would leave us just short of 4 hours to check into and catch the Qantas flight. We were worried about any delays and after a couple more calls in vain we accepted that we’d have to just brave it and hope for the best.

Didn’t do much that evening, found out that my hard-drive had broken – topped off a lousy couple of days, luck seemed to have deserted us! We had a nap and dinner with Jenny. Played some enjoyable Mah-Jong before going home. Chilled out in the room for the rest of the evening, there wasn’t actually anything else we could have done!

Next morning we slept in which was great. Had breakfast at Mr Cheungs again his English is gas he’s got a really strange accent, it sounds like he’s actually English! Left for the actual Huang Shan city where we would check out before boarding our last sleeper train for Shanghai. The bus was pretty funny, it was the slowest bus I’ve ever been on – it crawled along for most of the trip but then was able to bomb along on the motorway. I don’t understand how it was so slow before the motorway! Took us about an hour on that before we got to the trainstation. We headed to the old town and strolled around there for a bit. Went to an Irish bar called Koala Bar for food, we reckon they got their countries mixed up. Besides there wasn’t anything particularly Irish or Aussie about the place. The old town street was much the same as a lot of the other streets we’ve seen, all the shops sell exactly the same stuff. We’ve no idea how they even stay open with all the competition. Mary bought some boots in preparation for the cold back home! Met up with Jenny and went to a Chinese local restaurant where you see all the food on display, fill out an order form and they bring you over your food. Was quite funny seeing random Westeners trying to figure out what was going on!

Went to the sleeper train after dinner for the last time. They weren’t the worst things in the end, was able to get another decent sleep in the one back to Shanghai. Arrived back at our hotel and it took about 40 minutes for us to check in, no idea why it took so long! That day we got a subway and just relaxed after the travelling. Went over to the new tallest building in Shanghai, it definitely was more ‘chic’ but think the other building had more charm. Went back and had dinner a cafe and had a large 3 litre keg/barrel of beers between us for the evening before going back to the hotel.

Checked out of the hotel and left for the airport. Spent a few anxious hours at the gate expecting to see massive delays on the board but they didn’t come and we got down to Bangkok in a very timely fashion! The service on the Thai Airways flight was the best we’ve had so far, they did their best to ply us with booze and the tv/movies on demand made the flight go by nice and fast.

After checking into our Qantas flight we just hung around the airport for a while browsing at the usual tat and knick-knacks. Were pretty knackered getting onto the 0045 flight and took us a couple of hours to get to sleep after the usual meals that tasted like plastic. Slept a bit though so weren’t so bad for the arrival to Heathrow. Heathrow is ridiculous though. The checks are without the worst we’ve experienced. Can’t remember the number of them we went through, taking off shoes, getting your iris scanned, passport checked, bags put through scanners. Takes ages to get from terminal 4 to terminal 1 with all the checks, at least we didn’t have long to wait for the Aer Lingus flight. Out of all the flights, buses, trains and other trips the 55 minute flight from London to Cork seemed like it went on forever! Was good to be home though and see most of the family again. This is the last blog post for a while before I return on my travels again. I’ve enjoyed writing it and hope ye enjoyed reading even through my bad grammar and drivel!

Arrived in Hangzhou and even though it was drizzling we rented bikes and cycled around the lake which is the main attraction in Hangzhou. It was very nice and it seems like the Chinese lakes are more like what we’d consider gardens, figures! The one day we find a nice bit of green to balm out its wet and raining! Anyway was nice even though it was a little hairy at times on the main road amongst all the looney drivers!

We were at the cycling for a couple of hours and after met up with Jenny who brought us up to Wu Square which she said was pretty happening in the evening. It was a really nice part of the town and we had dinner from the little food stalls in the street. Had pineapple fried rice, dumplings, pork,beef and squid shishkebabs and a half-chicken before we decided we were finally full up! Was lovely food though and the street was jammed with locals all doing the same thing, a fella next to us was tucking into rabbits head – although tempted I resisted the urge for this one!

After the food market we pottered around with Jenny along all the shops on the street, Jenny found a couple of shops that were closing down and so had really good deals where we bought some more stuff that we don’t need! We left Jenny and decided to head to a cafe for some tea. After getting lost for a good 30 minutes we found a same place we went earlier in the day and I had some more lovely long-jing tea! Mary just read in the cafe for the evening while I did some surfing on their wireless.

Next day we got the 5 hour bus to Huangshan which is where the Yellow Mountain tourist town is located. The Yellow Mountain is our last spot before getting back to Shanghai at the end of the tour, its renowned as one of the most picturesque places in China so looking forward to the trek tomorrow. In a nice suprise the bus trip only took 3.5 hours and we arrived earlier than we expected. The town is the smallest we’ve been in with only 30,000 people living here. There are lots and lots of restaurants and supermarkets, the whole town is geared towards tourism! Tomorrow we’re probably going to take a cable car up the mountain which will shave off 7km off the trek but still have another 16km waiting for us but hopefully the weather will be decent for it!

Its raining outside so I’ve finally managed to catch up on the blogging, only 3 days left now before going home Am looking forward to it though, being in a place where everyone understands you will be nice!

Arrived in Shanghai and pretty much straight away were brought by Jenny up to the ‘Bund’ which is a riverside promenade where you can see the skyline of all the massive skyscrapers. After there we strolled up the main shopping area on W Nanjing st before being left to our own devices. Shanghai is quite like Hong Kong in that there’s a lot of western style restaurants and cafes and the city seems very modern. It is said to be the fashion capital of China and there was lots of high-end shops like Armani or Gucci around the place. It is also the worst place we’ve come to in China so far for the hawkers. As you walk along the main street, you get approached at a rate of about 3 every 5 minutes by people asking you if you want to buy bags, dvds, tshirts and lots of other random rubbish that I don’t think anyone would buy! You get used to saying no over and over however! We had some western food for a change in a cafe, burger and chips! After it got dark we hopped into the subway and found our way to Jin Mao tower. We headed to the Observation deck on floor 88 and sampled the views from there which are fairly spectacular. It was the highest building in the world only a few years ago and does indeed feel extremely high at 420 metres!

There is a new building that is now taller than the Jin Mao tower but it was closed for the night so we may go back here when we return to Shanghai. After the tower we headed back to W. Nanjing street for some beers in a lovely streetside cafe and Mary trained me on various names in her family, I need lots of practice!

The following day, we headed to the YuYuan gardens with Jenny and Rita fairly early. After Suzhou however I think we were gardened out and we didn’t spend long there. Had breakfast in Starbucks as they do nice scones and walked around the pretty ‘old town’ area for a while. Mary was feeling a bit sick with a cold so we decided to try and get the maglev done and head back to the hotel and chill for the rest of the day. However we walked up the bund towards a tourist sightseeing tunnel when we were approached by a Chinese fella looking for us to take his photo with his friends.

As soon as we took his photo he started talking to us in suprisingly good English. His name was Alfred (his Chinese name is something we couldn’t pronounce or remember!) and he was showing his two out-of-towner cousins around Shanghai. He worked for a pipe-selling business(yep he sells pipes for a living) and hadn’t seen his cousins for 3 years! After talking to them for about 10 minutes in the rain he asked us if we wanted to go to a tea ceremony. We had no idea what he was talking about but went along anyway. He brought us to a little building 5 minutes away and we were led to a room by a giggling host who seemed like she’d never seen a westener before. After much translating by Alfred the ceremony got underway, we tried 6 different types of tea. They were really different and every tea had a different function, some gave you better circulation, better memory, better luck etc. The Chinese are undoubtedly the most superstitious people we’ve ever come across. So many things represent good and bad luck, things that we couldn’t even contemplate have grave importance in bringing good and bad luck over here! We had 6 teas because 6 means good luck. You must drink your tea in 3 sups as 3 is a lucky number. You mustn’t let your pinky facing outwards if you are a man to show strength, the girls must have their pinky out. The first cup is poured over a Buddha statue and if the statue bubbles it means that there is going to be good luck. Theres so much more I can’t list them all! Tea ceremories are only done once or twice in peoples lives Alfred told us so we were lucky enough to meet them that day. It was intriguing and very very different from anything we’ve done on the trip so far. Its amazing because anywhere else in Asia that wouldn’t have happened but the Chinese are definitely more out-going and friendly towards westeners. The ceremony itself was expensive and we bought some of the tea we tried for bringing home but was worth it. After the ceremony we exchanged emails and we went on our way towards the maglev train.

The maglev or magnetic levitation train is the fastest train in the world. It hovers off the ground and hence friction can’t slow down the train. It can travel 30 kilometres out to Pudong airport in 7-8 minutes while it takes a taxi about an hour to cover the same distance with traffic. We got a return ticket and bombed out towards the airport at a maximum speed of 431km/h! It only stays at that speed for around a minute but the rate of acceleration and deceleration is frightening! After the train we headed back to the hotel.

Had dinner with Jenny in a fancy hotel restaurant tha night. Had goose and beef but it was all extremely cheap relative to the service and the hotel so we were impressed! Went to the acrobatics show after dinner which was extraordinary. Without doubt the best show I’ve ever been too. The things they did were amazing and calling them acrobatics doesn’t do them justice I think. Can’t even begin to describe the show, we don’t know how someone would even train to do what they did! There were plate-spinners, guys throwing hats to one another, ballet/contortionists,10 people on a single bike and the piece de resistance was the Ball of Death. The ball is just a metal cage that is entirely enclosed except for one little door. A motorbike came out and began to whizz around inside the ball which everyone thought was fairly impressive as he was flipping upside down and going at a fast speed. Then another came out and joined the cage. The two of them went around and around barely missing one another for about a minute. Then another bike came out. Then another. And another. Finally there was five bikes in the ball with only milliseconds between them speeding around the metal ball. It was incredible and a great end to the show.  

Next day we headed to Hangzhou on another short train, this time only 1 hour 50!

Arrived nice and early and headed straight on a rickshaw tour of the city(small city by China standards, only 6 million). We were brought along little narrow streets that seemed more impressive to us than the Hutongs in Beijing. We pitied the riders hauling us along as they struggled quite a bit on the hills on their bikes and had to get off and pull the carraige along by hand, seemed like hard work! We stopped off at a local market and saw various bits and bobs for sale, had some chestnuts and watermelon before getting down to the interesting part of the market, the meat section! We saw lots of eels, crabs, frogs(including one woman gutting live ones down a side street, we couldn’t take photos as the government doesn’t allow the type of frogs she was gutting to be eaten!), snails, chickens(live and dead) and fish all for sale there. After the rickshaw we headed to the two most famous gardens in Suzhou, the Lingering Garden and the Humble Administrators garden. Managed to lose each other in the Lingering garden so had to leave there sort of early as we knew the best place to find one another was at the exit gate! We walked around the Humble Administrators garden for a good while, getting destroyed by mosquitos in the process! Gardens in China really aren’t the same as what we’d consider gardens in Ireland. They’ve got lots of buildings, the odd little pond/lake and lots of concrete. I was looking forward to lying out in the grass chilling out for a good hour or so but was disappointed! They’re still impressive though.

After the gardens we had a walk to the Silk Museum and the Suzhou Museum. The Suzhou museum was free and we briefly stayed there. The silk museum was pretty good, we saw silkworms feeding on leaves and a lady making a silk tapestry on a massive wooden complicated machine. It takes a long time, we watched her for about 5 minutes and she only got a couple of little bits done!

Had a lovely dinner with Jenny that night in a local restaurant, probably the best dish we’ve had so far in China. Mary was going to have her hair cut the next day so Jenny went over to a hairdressers with her and translated the all-important instructions on how they should cut her hair! We had a 45 minute boat cruise down the Grand Canal (used to run from Hangzhou to Beijing, over 3000 miles long) which was really nice, its amazing what some nicely placed lights could do for an area!

Had a couple of brews for the rest of the evening before heading back to the hotel. Next morning Mary got her hair cut and I went to the internet for some blogging(so far behind!) before we grabbed the short 1 hour 50 minute train to Shanghai.

We got up and took the 3 hour drive to SiMatei, which is known to be one of the most intact and lesser crowded sections of the Great Wall close to Beijing. We decided to go up the hard way. We walked from the bottom all the way to the 2nd turret and then from there all the way to the 12th, no mean feat I assure you. Drenched in sweat and knackered by the end, we eventually made it and enjoyed the views which were spectacular. You can see other sections of the wall winding into the mountains off in the distance and we enjoyed the odd chuckle at other poor sods trudging their way up to the final turret! After staying up at that section for a while we headed back down to the bottom via ‘mini-train’ and cable car. Managed to mess up my ankle on the way down somewhat, was sore but ok – left me with a dodgy looking limp though! The mini-train could rival Hong Kong for its steepness and it certainly doesn’t seem as safe! Got down to the bottom and headed back to Beijing. On the way back we stopped at the pearl market which is really just 2 floors of clothes, bags, electrics etc and 3 floors of jewellery. Inevitably we bought some knick-knacks there!
Made it back to the hotel for a quick nap and then headed to the kung-fu show. It was very good lots of fighting, breaking of stuff over heads, legs and arms and bits of dancing/tai-chi style movements.

After the kung-fu we headed to the main shopping street in Beijing Wang-fujing for a little walk and some ice-cream. The place has clearly just recently had a face-lift for the Olympics and is very new and clean looking! There was a market street with lots of food-stalls selling all sorts of food, most of it looked entirely unappealling!

Tried to head to an area called Sanlitun for a bar but managed to get really lost and figured out only a day later that we took a taxi to a place that was no-where near Sanlitun! Were tired anyway from the various stuff during the day so weren’t too bothered by it all.

Next day we got up to go to a place called Summer Palace. The palace was the place the emperor used to go to for the summer and he’d just chill out there. Its got a large lake in the middle of it and lots of pavillons and little corridors strewn around the shore. We walked around for about 3/4 hours and hired a pedal-boat for an hour which proved to be a nice work-out but fun nonetheless! After Summer Palace we headed back towards our hotel in what was described as an ‘old taxi’ by the guy driving it. I wasn’t painted the same but had a meter so we were happy enough with it. He was bombing along and we looked away and chatted for a bit and when we looked back at the meter it had shot from 15 to 60 yuan. Considering we paid 75 to get out there we weren’t too impressed that this guy was trying to scam us with his dodgy meter and asked to get dropped off at the next closest drop-off spot. Cheeky bugger managed to get 80 out of us before we got off at the side of the highway. We got another more reasonable taxi the rest of the way for a far better price. You find con-artists preying on tourists everywhere unfortunately, the other trick that is commonly used is fake money which we also got caught for. We bought a bottle of water for 3 yuan after climbing a large set of stairs with our bags and I gave him a 100 as it was at hand and I had nothing else. Normallly they give out if you give them a large note but this guy swiftly gave me change and we were off again. Later on it was rejected in a restaurant and Jenny showed us that there was a fake 50 and 20 in the change. I was raging, guess theres low-lifes in every country!

Anyway back to the day…….

We got dropped off at a nice little Hutong(read - small narrow alleyway only found in Beijing) and strolled around there for a while and had lunch/dinner at a cheap restaurant we found along the way. Can’t remember what we had but the memorable part of the meal was the enormous woman sitting in the table next to us who was dressed in an ill-fitting t-shirt and her underwear. She inhaled the food and the staff kept coming back with more, it wasn’t pretty.

Got the train to Suzhou in the evening…. 

Arrived in Beijing after another decent sleep on the train. Got settled quickly and met Jenny to check out Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City. Tiannamen was nice, there was still some Olympic stuff around but they were changing over to the Paraylmpics as they are due to start in a couple of days. Took the obligitary photos all around the square!

Met our guide for the Forbidden City who was quite good, she kept the group moving along nicely! The city was built for the emperor way back when and he lived there tucked away from all the rest of Beijing. We walked around and checked out all the various halls and residences for a couple of hours before getting a rickshaw tour of the Hutongs. The hutongs are little narrow alleyways all around Beijing where locals live. The tour wasn’t very good, mostly because our guides English wasn’t great and he showed us the same stuff over and over!

We headed to the Temple of Heaven after the rickshaw. Its basically a large park you stroll around for a few hours, there was the usual collection of people playing music, mah-jong and singing. Again it had a nice feel about it. Our feet were nearly worn off us by the time we fiinshed up there and headed back to the hotel for a nap before dinner. Had peking duck at a restaurant close to the hotel with Jenny, it wasn’t as nice as we thought it would be after hearing so much about it! Had an early one in preparation for the Great Wall at 6am the next day!

Next day we got up pretty early to go out to the Giant Panda research base outside Chengdu. We had to go out early as apparently pandas don’t like the sun and are most active in the mornings and evenings. The park was great we saw tons of them and got treated to a ten minute play-fight between 4 of the pandas! They really put their bodies on the line when fighting, were taking some serious falls but getting back up again and heading back into the fight! 

After the pandas we headed into the peoples park and stolled around there for a bit. It was a good laugh, the park seemed to be a place where lots of older people go to sing, dance, play sport, do tai chi and drink tea. We played some badminton (I broke my sunglasses) and bought a massive thing of sugar to eat. We went and had some tea in one of the teahouses and played some mah-jong. Mary had some lemon tea which she wasn’t massively keen on(she’s very much an English breakfast girl) and I had Long-gin tea which is my new favourite. Had some pizza and headed to the overnight train for Xi’an.

Rita had another strop, this time with Jenny. We both had a pretty good sleep for the first time on the train and we ready for the next day! Arrived pretty late to Xi’an, 3pm. Went out pretty much straight away and rented a tandem bike and cycled around the city walls. They were very nice and we were helped by the drizzly weather, wasn’t too hot!

In the evening we headed to the dumpling banquet. We were served up all sorts of dumplings, they were ok for the most part – we weren’t sure about some of the meat being used! Had a bottle of wine for the first time since Cambodia and enjoyed the show after dinner. Jenny then brought us to a bar close to the hotel for a drink before we headed back to the hotel. The bar was pretty happening and we didn’t have a clue what we were doing! There were beer bottles all over the counter and we couldn’t figure out why. It took the staff there a while to understand we just wanted two beers but we eventually got them. We were sitting across the way from a guy who had about 12 unopened beers in front of him(he also smoked) and between two other groups who also smoked. Was weird being in a bar with smokers all around again! I finished my beer and the guy opposite us opened a beer and gave it to me. We got his name and age using our phrase book but that was about as far as we could go, pity we have no mandarin! Another girl randomly came up to us from another group of people to clink her bottle and give us a ‘cheers’, its that kind of stuff that makes China great, the people are really friendly!

Next day was the big day at the Terracotta Warriors. It was raining all day but thankfully they were all indoors. We stopped off at a factory where replica warriors are made using the same techniques used to make the original warriors. We bought a little set of three, we don’t normally buy souvenir stuff but these look pretty good and last for years. Theres a lot of history associated with the warriors but lets just say that I think the original Qin emperor was a bit of a looney! Had to wait a lot for Rita all day as she bought this and that, was pretty annoying.

The warriors were very impressive, theres over 7000 of them and still more waiting to be found. We met the farmer who found them all he was looking well for a man over 70, looked almost like a mafia figure sitting back on his chair cigar on hand practically printing the cash!

We got soaked on the way back to the van after the warriors and headed back to the city. We checked out the Bell and Drum towers, mostly to get out of the rain! They weren’t very impressive to us but that could have been because we were drowned already! Headed down towards the Muslim Quarter and Mary bought some bags and runners, I bought a pair of shoes. We reckon we got good deals but we probably didn’t – our bargaining isn’t the best sometimes! Got a taxi/rickshaw back to the hotel. The taximan put up five fingers when we asked how much so we thought 5RMB, cool. When we got back he was actually looking for 50RMB which is exorberent! We argued for a while, gave him 10 and walked away.

Had dinner with Jenny that night, just the 3 of us. Had some interesting chats about their marraige customs and their superstition. The Chinese are extremely superstitious people, everything either gives you good or bad luck! Their marraiges are funny too. The man must bring over a lot of money(depending on how much he can afford, the amount can be the talk of the town sometimes) to the wife-to-be who then uses a portion of this money to buy stuff for when they move in together, beds, tables etc. Then when the wedding day arrives and they move in together the man gets to see all the new stuff for the first time.

After the dinner the weather was still crap so we went and chilled out at Starbucks for the evening with some hot chocolate and tea! Played some mah-jong and I surfed the web while Mary read for the rest of the evening!

The next morning we headed out to the Pagoda to see the water fountain show. We almost missed it but it was very impressive. We went into the pagoda to have a look, the grounds were very pretty. Headed back to the ‘new street’ in Xi’an for a potter, had lunch at a restaurant that had no English whatsoever. Used pictures and our phrasebook to get by – we were very impressed with ourselves! Bought a few little bits in the street before heading to the train station for the train to Beijing.

Left Chongqing at 10 for Chengdu. The 3.5 hour bus journey took 5.5 hours. I was sitting next to a Chinese guy who when he wasn’t staring at me was chain-smoking! We had to lug our bags into the aisle of the bus as they had no room underneath so it made moving around the bus really hard for everyone! We arrived in Chengdu and went to the internet for the first time in 4 days – probably the longest I’ve been without internet in ages!!! We went to a really nice section of the town to go to a face-changing and fire spitting show that night. The whole place was lit up very nicely and there were lots of little shops and bars along the narrow alleys. The show itself was really good, some of the dancing and the short play at the start were confusing as we had no idea what was going on but there some brilliant hand-puppetry and the face-changing was excellent and bizarre! We had a beer and an ice-cream and headed back for the night.

We decided to not to go to the Giant Buddha trip today as we’ve seen tons of them before and its not our thing. So it was great we had the whole day to just walk around the town and wander around getting lost for a while. We had the best milkshake I’ve ever had and the biggest frappe I’ve ever seen in a cafe for lunch/breakfast. We’re going for hotpot tonight which is meant to be unbelievably hot, Jenny says its even too hot for her! Tomorrow we’re going to the Giant Panda base and a park to look around and to go to a nice teahouse. After that another long train journey to Xi’an……..at least the worst of the buses are over!!!  

Hey all,

We travelled from Yangshou overnight up to a place called Wuhan where we arrived early morning at 7am. The city, Wuhan, was just a stop over but Jenny told us it has 8 million people living there. Strange, never heard of it before but its nearly twice the size of Ireland! Took the usual collection of public bus and overnight hard sleepers to get to the Yangtze cruise. The public buses are fairly funny you get a collection of random Chinese people who tend to split their time in the trip either spitting, smoking or staring at us! Everywhere we go people stare at you like you’ve got 2 heads, a lot of them must never have seen Westeners before.

We were taking the boat tour from a town that is right next to the biggest dam in the world, the Three Gorges dam. We met up with another Geckos tour group, there’s 8 of them in the group a mix of 3Aussies, 2 English, 1 Canadian, 2 Kiwis. Its nice to have other people to talk to and its the size the group should be really. We went to look at the dam with them, its pretty impressive. The water level now is only 150 metres but its going to rise another 25 metres to 175 and flood the homes of a million people. We arrived at our boat for 7pm, it was pretty nice complete with 5 floors. Our room was grand, twin again though as usual in China. Just hung around for the rest of the evening chatting with the others and playing some cards. Next morning we went on a tour up the Shennong river to take a small boat that was piloted by some local fishermen. I’ve never seen so much energy expended for such little gain! They were 6 guys rowing away mad but their paddles were rubbish and they weren’t paddling properly for the most part just touching the water and coming out again! They brought us up a stream with an ‘English speaking guide’ who really couldn’t speak English very well at all. She would occasionally however break out into song which was funny! We reached a set of rapids going against the boat so all our paddlers jumped out of the boat and got ropes that were tied onto the side of the boat and pulled the boat up the rapids. It seemed like hard work for them, they used to do it naked so we were spared that at least! Once we reached the top of the rapids the lads hopped into the boat again and we just turned around and went straight back down the rapids! Was a fun trip though if not a little strange! We went back down the Shennong stream again and called into a little town and watched a local minority show the locals had going. It was very strange, a sort of warped blind date where the girls had their heads covered with cloth and the fellas had to do all sorts of weird tasks before they could take it off. There was also an excellent juggler and some singing and dancing. We went into a traditional Chinese medicine store and saw all sorts of odd looking plants, dried Geckos and roots that look like they’d do far more harm than good if they were brought anywhere near me if I was sick! Headed back to the boat and relaxed until we came to the last Gorge on the trip. We then came to a city where we had some dinner which was an entertaining affair. Rita had a strop and attacked Jenny and the restaurant owner and stormed away from the table. We were quite embarrassed and bemused by it all. We had bought some fireworks so went down to set them off. We bought 3 large sorta roman candles and tons of sparkles. As soon as we began to set off a few about 10 kids came from nowhere and started to get really excited by the whole thing. Jenny said they only see fireworks at new year so we gave them a few to set off and they were thrilled. We also gave the rest of the sparklers to the parents as we couldn’t figure out who we had already given them to! They all seemed pretty happy anyway and we snuck back to the boat after they began harrassing one of the mothers for fireworks instead of us! That evening we learnt how to play Mah-Jong which is a traditional Chinese game. Its quite like gin-rummy with some subtle differences, took us a while to get our heads around it but when we figured it out it was really enjoyable and the hour rental of the gear flew……..

Everyone else had gone to bed pretty early so I grabbed a beer and we went to our room to watch some Olympics.

The next day we chilled out until the boat reached our final destination. Repacked for about the hundreth time. From there we took a ricketty old bus through some incredibly sandy areas to the local bus station. The bus was a tad more uncomfortable than previous ones, the spitting and smoking was little hard to take as the bus trip was over 5 hours long. We arrived in Chongqing pretty late after 7. Although neither of us have ever heard of Chongqing before its actually the biggest city in the world with 32.5 million people living there! The smog was unbelievable but the weather there was nice as it wasn’t too warm at all. Went for dinner with Jenny to an odd food court and had some none-too-nice dishes but they filled a gap. Strolled around for a bit and went into our first proper tea house. It was like someone’s living room with sofas and lamps on all the tables. After some confusion with the people there who had very little if no English we ordered English breakfast tea for two. It was the strangest cup of tea ever, tasted of hot chocolate for some strange reason. Had our first cups and then they re-filled the jug with more hot water and the next cups tasted exactly like English breakfast! After we left most of the shops were closed so we headed back. Felt nostalgic so watched Back to the Future that night!

In the ferry terminal we finally got to go through the customs and use our China visas, they worked and we were very pleased. Got the hydrofoil across to Guangzhou, it was a short 1hour 50 journey. At the city we had some food(had no idea what the menu meant so just randomly picked out something) and we walked around for a bit. Got our noodles for the train and some water supplies. We took an overnight sleeper train from Guangzhou to Guilin. We were staying in ‘hard sleepers’ which means that theres 6 bunks per section and you share with locals. The bunks are far better than the crappy Vietnam sleeper bus beds so I was happy. Theres hot water on board so people generally bring cheap noodles and just fill them up there for dinner. The train and China in general is pretty modern actually we were suprised. Think we were expecting a mix between Vietnam and Laos but its better off than those places, cleaner anyways.

After the train we got out and took a bus to Yangshou. The town is really nice, paved pedestrianised streets and lots to do there. Checked into our hotel and got another lovely room, think we’ve definitely moved from budget to mid-range standard here with the tour. Had a wee tiff with Rita but got it all sorted out later.

We got on a cruise down the river Li which is a massive river in this area. Before the boat we walked around the local market and saw some of the goings on there. The people were really friendly and one old fella couldn’t stop laughing at the way I was laughing. We took a picture of another old fella getting his hair cut and when we showed it back to him they cracked up in laughter. It doesn’t take much!

On the boat tour we got the first experience of what I’ve heard happens to most westeners in China. There wasn’t any other westerners on the boat, in fact Yangshou in general theres far far more Chinese tourists than foreigners. Its a nice change from all the other places in South East Asia. The boat was nice, the scenery is quite like Halong Bay with limestone karst mountains all around. We went up front to take a few photos together and it was like something clicked with all the Chinese. Every single one of them wanted photos with us, one by one or together. It felt like we were superstars the way they all wanted photos with us! There was tons of combinations and it was bizzare! After doing our bit for our ‘fans’ we headed back to the hotel to get a bus to our hot-air balloon ride.

The hot air balloon ride really was extremely hot. The thingy that they use for the flame to alter the altitude of the balloon was really close  to our heads and whenever he put it on full-blast(about every 30 seconds) it was like you had your head next to a fire! The views were really impressive and we cruised around for 60 minutes sweating but it was very enjoyable. We landed in what seemed like a random field and as soon as we got out were swarmed with insects! Made our way back to the hotel talking with a nice Dutch couple(the guy works for TomTom in Holland and asked me if I’d like to work in Amsterdam. Sadly I declined!) and then got ready for the comorant fishing trip. Comorant fishing is an old-fashioned way of catching fish used by the locals. Its a little cruel but is fascinating to see. The idea of it is that the fishermen tie the necks of the birds and the birds swim in front of their boat. The birds catch fish and the fisherman picks up the bird squeezes the mouth of the bird and the fish pops out. The birds only really catch reasonably small fish and get to eat loads during the day so don’t fly away.

That night we were treated to the most bizzare feast we’ve ever had. Our guide organised that a lady would catch a mountain snake for us and cook it. At the restaurant the snake was brought out of the kitchen for us and was handed to us to put around our necks etc. I obliged but Mary chickened out! They then proceeded there in the middle of the restaurant to cut off the snake’s head and drain its blood. A crowd had gathered at this stage and there was a group of Irish girls that were none too impressed!

The snake was cooked and brought out with veggies and we got dog and snails. The snails were in two varieties, stuffed and just plain. The stuffed were far nicer. The dog was ok, was very chewy and had some boney stuff in it! I think in general I would say that it was pretty woof. The snake was nice and the snake soup(made from the extracted blood and bones) was quite nice as well so we ended up eating quite a lot of these strange dishes! Jenny bought a haki-sak and we started kicking it around in the street. Some randomers joined in, they were all quite good at it but I held my own, sorta. Managed to break my flip-flops of 3 months so was a bit annoyed with that but was good fun. Covered in sweat we returned to our room for the night!

The next day was action packed. We got up and met Jenny to get bikes and cycle out to the countryside. Our first stop was at a rice-paddy where we could see the locals harvesting the rice plants(not sure of what they’re called properly!). We stopped off a second time and got to do it ourselves, its fairly tricky!

Next off we arrived at the rivers-edge and went for a swim. We were a little unsure if it was rude to take off our tops and go swimming, Mary ended up just jumping in fully clothed. Didn’t matter as we were dry again in about 10 minutes in the heat!

Next off we headed to a mountain called Moon Hill – named obviously because the hill looks like a moon. Climbing up it was an ordeal, it took about 25 minutes of stairs climbing to get up. We were annoyed by a lady trying to sell us stuff all the way up, we told her no but she just walked up with us anyway. At the top we were pretty parched but refused to buy from her on principle so just soldiered through it! The views from the top were impressive and it felt great going back down again.

Had lunch and then set off for the Buddha cave. We were expecting another disappointing cave with a whole bunch of Buddha statues in it like the one in Laos but said we’d go anyway. The cave was actually really impressive. We climbed down very deep manoueving our way around all the little tunnels. It was pretty hard going and we finally arrived at a tiny little tunnel that we could either go through as a short cut or go back around the way we came to get there. Three of the 7 people didn’t want to do it for various reasons but both of us did it, it was a tight squeeze but felt good doing it! After that we headed to a mud-bath further down a few tunnels. Destroyed each other in a mud-bath and washed it all off again before leaving for the bikes once more. We cycled back to the town and had a little rest before the lightshow and dinner.

The light-show is a massive event in Yangshou. Chinese people travel for hours just to see it and leave again the same night. It has been directed by one of the most famous Chinese directors and there were thousands of people at it, very fe westerners from what we could see. Its essentially a light-show on water with hundreds of boats and people lighting up the water. The scale of it was very impressive and we thoroughly enjoyed it(even though I got bitten by lots of mozzies and sweated profusely for the entire show!). We weren’t sure if there was a story to go with it or not! The Chinese people are strange at shows, they talk all the way through and only a handful applauded at the end, must be the norm over here.

Headed back to a restaurant to have some local ‘beer fish’. The fish is put in a container of beer and it swims around breathing it in. Its then killed and grilled and served with some veggies. It was only ok, there was tons of bones in it. We had some other lovely grub so didn’t go hungry anyways!

Next morning we got up for 8 for a caligraphy class. We were thought how to write 0-10 in Chinese, a few other bits and our names. I was feeling a little iffy so decided to pull out of the cooking class. Mary did it and they paid a trip to the market seeing all the various dead dogs hanging which wasn’t very nice. They cooked five dishes and had a larf. Going to go and check out the town for a little bit as we’ve not been able to do so yet with all the activities and are late getting an overnight train and then a bus to get our cruise down the Yangtze river.