China - The Great Wall and our final impressions

On our last day in Beijing, we took a bus up to Badaling to see the Great Wall of China. It was raining and miserable again in Beijing, but as we drove north towards the wall the day began to brighten-up. As with virtually all Chinese tours, this involved being forced in a 70-minute excursion into a Jade "Museum". The museum turned out to be a large room with 400 stalls trying to force us to purchase some Jade, before eventually being herded into another room and fed dog. The Great Wall was amazing though, and a great end to our travels through China. The wall itself is truly breathtaking, both to look at and to walk-along. The Chinese had felt the need to enhance the experience by caging some bears in tiny enclosures at the bottom which took from the experience some what, but on the plus side the trip down involved sliding down on a large mechanical helter-skelter/tobaggan-run.



Most of the people we've met along the way have said that China was the toughest travelling experience they've had so far, so we're looking forward to an easier ride in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. China is still a very much closed country, and the Chinese people are brainwashed by their media. The Chinese media's portrayal of the Tibet problems is disturbing to say the least. According to CCTV9 (the English language Chinese TV channel) the Tibetans would be stuck in a life of Serfdom if the Chinese hadn't "saved" them. The Chinese people as a whole are a very pushy nation, which I suppose is a by-product of the fact that there are a few too many of them (the one child policy should sort that out in about fifty years though). They are also the phlegmiest people in the world. You can't walk ten paces in China without somebody loudly clearing their throat and depositing it on the pavement. This isn't a hobby of just old men though. Many a time I've seen a pretty young Chinese girl stop in the middle of the street, and loudly hock up the contents of her nose and throat in front of me. Charming!



All in all though, we really did enjoy China. Their culture and history is amazing, and we met some great people along the way. If you stop and look lost for even a moment in China, then nine times out of ten somebody will come up to you and offer their help (albeit it in Mandarin).

We've now arrived in Bangkok, and already we feel that we're on a much more well-trodden backpacker router. Everybody speaks English, and organising trips/tours/travel are proving to be much easier already. We went to the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew, before embarking on a river tour of the city. We've braved a couple of Tuk-Tuks as well, and thus far we've come away with our lives. We've one more day in Bangkok, before heading off to Phnom Penh in Cambodia on Friday.

China - Xi'an (part 2), Hangzhou, Shanghai, Qingdao and Beijing

As we've moved further north, we've really started to warm to both China and the Chinese people. We had a great last day in Xi'an and made some friends whilst visiting the Terracotta Warriors. We made our way to the Muslim Quarter together in the evening and ate our fill of random meat sticks (goat, dog, and rat probably) from the street vendors. I think its fair to say that I (Gareth) may have had one two many beers in the bar that night, as I threw all of my toys out of the pram when Tara tried to drag me to the airport the next morning. I'm still not quite sure how she managed to drag my moaning hungover carcass to the airport that morning and onto the flight to Hangzhou.



Hangzhou is a beautiful city just south of Shanghai. Our hostel (4eyes backpackers hostel) was just south of the city on the edge of the large West Lake that borders one side of the city. Hangzhou is considered one of the tourist hotspots for Chinese people, and our strolls along the lake would have been slightly more romantic if we didn't have to share the place with a trillion Chinese people in matching red tour baseball hats. Much to Tara's distaste, we discovered that Hangzhou is an ideal city to cycle around. So we took to two-wheels and cycled around the West Lake and also to the LingYin temple (where we procured a chubby Buddha), and yet-another giant Chinese pagoda. Our friend Jeremy joined us for the weekend in Hangzhou, and accompanied us up to Shanghai on the high-speed train link.



We only spent a couple of nights in Shanghai and hit the typical tourist sites. We went for a stroll along the Bund (the old side of the city) and then hopped on the obscure and tacky sight-seeing tunnel that crosses the river onto the new side of the city (Pudong). Jeremy and I convinced Tara that Hooters was the best option for lunch, before heading down the main shopping street in search of Chopsticks (surprisingly difficult in China) and Lemsip (unsurprisingly difficult in China). We spent our second morning in Shanghai in the stunning Yuyuan Gardens and Old Town (which is rapidly being destroyed), before heading over to the well presented yet exceptionally dull Shanghai Museum.




We flew to Qingdao on April 15th, and back to our beloved Jeremy. This started off quite badly as Jez insisted on giving us a 2-hour guided tour of the train that he is engineering, but things quickly improved when we arrived at his palatial apartment. Qingdao is a beautiful German City on the east coast of China, and is considered to be the premier seaside resort in China (imagine Blackpool with 15 million people). We indulged in Jeremy's lifestyle whilst in Qingdao and treated ourselves to foot massages, full-body massages, authentic Indian food, traditional Qingdao hotpot, and several gallons of Tsingtao beer (brewed in Qingdao) and a couple of large Whiskeys. Jeremy proved to be the ultimate host. He gave up his bed for us, and drank with us until the wee small hours despite having to drag himself to work at 7:30am each morning. Qingdao was also interesting as we experimented with the Chinese Postal service (where we encountered the finest parcel-packer in the east), and confused the hell out of a travel agent by trying to buy some rail tickets (a ludicrous idea in China).

Our final stop in China has been Beijing. A city of 42 million people, half of whom try to get onto a metro carriage at the same time whilst the other half are trying to get off. I've never seen carnage quite like it. We spent our first morning in the Forbidden City, then marvelled at the vast numbers of soldiers marching backwards and forth across Tianamen Square (which is closed far more often than it is open), before heading over to the Temple of Heaven in the afternoon. On our second day we made our way over to the Summer Palace (the place where the emperor and his ladies hung out in the balmy summer days), and then met up with Meghan and Steve (the friends we made on the Yangtze River Cruise) for Peking duck and some beers in their hostel. Much of today has been spent getting wet. It has rained continuously since last night, but that didn't stop us. The Irish and English are more adept at dealing with water than your average duck. We caught the subway over to the Lamastery (a monastery for Lamas) first thing this morning and then made our way over to the Olympic site. We also had the honour of watching a glorious british sporting victory (much to Tara's delight), as Allison & Randall romped to victory in the second heat of the Olympic qualification tournament for Synchronised Swimming. I feel that an Olympic gold may be beckoning. The Olympic site is amazing and the Birds Nest and Aquatic Centre are both jaw-dropping, but there still seems to be a considerable amount of work to be done away from the venues if they are to be prepared for the games (a metro line to the site might be a good starting point!). All that's left to do in Beijing is the Great Wall of China, and come rain or shine that is where we will be tomorrow.

China - Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Yichang, and Xi'an

I'd like to say that we've seen a lot of beautiful things in China, but I can't. All we've really seen so far is mist and fog.



All three days that we spent in Hong Kong were shrouded in fog which made it hard to appreciate that impressive skyline that the city is known for. We did however take advantage of the nightlife in Hong Kong and got reasonably drunk in the Soho bars. We took the funicular railway up to Victoria peak on the second day, which was a bit of a waste of time as we could barely see our hands front of our faces. By the third day, the fog was starting to get us down, so we were quite glad to be hopping onto the KCR East train across the border to Shenzhen. Shenzhen proved to be quite a culture shock for us both. The first noticable site that we happened across after leaving the station was a corpse. Some desperate chinese guy was using his apparently dead father as a begging tool. Being the caring sharing people that we are, we hurried away along the street and into our 5* hotel (a bargain at 30 pounds per night). Shenzhen was a reasonably grim city overall, but we did find a nice park and treated ourself to a western dinner in the evening.



From Shenzhen, we flew up to Chongqing and met up with our friend Jeremy. The three of us then started our voyage down the Yangtze river on the Oriental Emperor cruise ship. This was a wonderful three days, and we made some great new friends on board. We spent most of our time sipping cold Tsingtao beer on the sundeck and playing an old man's Irish card game (Tara ... "my Dad would be so proud, passing on his love of 25s"). Our cruise lasted three days and three nights, and took us through the three gorges. This is a section of the river that has been flooded by an enormous dam. Essentially when the dam project is finished, the water level of the river will have risen to 175m. This is good news for the electricity supply in China as the dam generates a huge amount of power, but not such good news for the 2 million people whose homes have been submerged. The Chinese propaganda machine seems to be working well though, because all but one tour guide claimed that everybody was delighted with their homes being washed away (and their resettlement into ugly highrise concrete flats). It was still a really good trip and so worthwhile (even if alot of cool historial stuff and all the little farms are now submerged under water), the scenery was amazing and we got to do some worthwhile little trips off the boat along the way.





When we arrived in Yichang, we decided against using the ferry-supplied coach because we'd convinced ourselves that the crew were trying to rip us off. This proved to be somewhat of a mistake, as the taxi drivers at the port were far more adept at ripping us off. After 30 minutes of haggling and arguing (via Jeremy's chinese interpreter) in the baking mid-day sun we eventually managed to arrange some transport into the centre of town. Yichang was another typical "small" Chinese city of 5 million people, so we decided to make our way to the airport a little early and onto Xi'an.

Xi'an is by far our favourite city so far. We've happened across a fantastic hostel, and have enjoyed our first day exploring the city bell towers, pagodas and temples.

Goa, Mumbai, and the start of Hong Kong

The one thing that any would-be Indian traveller needs to know is that a large bottle of Kingfisher (we're talking 650ml) costs just 60 rupees in a bar. That's just 75p!!!! For that reason alone, everybody should go and visit India right NOW! Other than that the country also offers kind and genuine people, beautiful scenery, year-round 30 degree weather, and good-value tasty food. But that's neither here-nor-there when you consider how cheap the beer is.

We spent a week lounging around the beaches and bars of Goa, but highlight of the week was when we rented a scooter and made our own way up to Arambol. After 30 minutes of arguing with the local wheeler-dealer, we managed to convince him to give us a helmet each (one helmet seemed crazy to him, let alone two!) for our daytrip on the mad roads of India. It cost us an extra 50% to have two helmets, but at just 4 pounds for the day's bike hire and both lids it was still a bargain. We then hit the open road....and a taxi. It turned out that my motorbiking skills had worsened somewhat in the four years since I last climbed aboard a two-wheeler. Nobody was hurt though, and after 30 minutes of wobbling across the Goan roads, I managed to re-master the two-wheeler. Despite it being illegal not to wear a helmet, we were the only covered riders that we saw all day.

At the end of the week, we were very sad indeed to be climbing into Ravi's (one of the Indian friends that we made in our week) taxi for the journey up to the airport. Having said that, we were also very happy to be climbing out of Ravi's taxi, because he almost killed us four times on the way there. We took a short flight up to Mumbai, and then had half-day to kill there so we took a cab into the centre of the city. This was one of the most depressing 45 minutes of our lives. The roads of Mumbai are lined with poor people living on the poverty-line in shacks. There was no beautiful Goan countryside during that journey, and at one point a hungry Indian man tried to break into our taxi using his wooden leg. Without doubt the most disturbing point of our trip so far. Our taxi driver took us to the Gateway of India, a supposed highlight of Mumbai, which turned out to be a construction site. After being mauled by the local sellers and gypsies, we decided to adjourn to the fanciest restaurant in town and blow our daily budget. The restauraurant, Indigo, was glorious and without doubt the best way to waste five hours of your life in Mumbai (Bill Clinton ate there and yet it was still very affordable).

After dinner, we returned to Mumbai airport and camped out for our 5am flight. This was a fairly unpleasant experience due to the lack of A/C on the check-in side, but we made use of the time to call home, and we were delighted to discover that Mumbai airport had lounger/beds and A/C on the departure side of the airport. Without wanting to appear poetic, this was almost a mirror on the city itself which seemed to be a city divided by wealth. The majority seemed to have very little, but a lucky few seemed to be very affluent indeed.

Hong Kong has proved to be a refreshing change from India. Our hotel was a lucky selection on expedia, and is far far nicer than we'd expected. We have spent today visiting the "largest outdoor sitting bronze buddha". Suggesting that there are much larger standing non-bronze buddhas. Nonetheless, it was quite a sight and the cable car up the mountain afforded some great views of Hong Kong.