Tandems and dumplings...

Wednesday 11th April 2007

Those of us lucky enough to have garnered some sleep awoke to yet more dramatic scenery at whatever o’clock (some time around 9ish I think). After the usual ablutions and packing up we finished off the pizza in true ‘Breakfast of Champions’ style and picked up our things to get off the train around midday in Xi’an, where we’d spend two days and nights before going to visit the Terracotta Warriors.

We jumped into taxis, witnessing the first organised queue seen since leaving the UK, and headed for the YMCA all desperate for a wash-and-brush-up after a 17-hour train journey... only to be told when we got there that the power and water were off and wouldn’t be back on before 6pm. Some of the group headed out on a whistle-stop tour of the sights while we opted for a more leisurely (ultimately even more so for some!) visit to the city walls to hire bikes and cycle the 14 kms round it.

After braving the traffic at the South Gate (no mean feat to cross the road) we headed up the stairs to be re-united with those of our group who’d taken the infinitely safer (and cheaper!) option of crossing at a less busy junction. We scoured the horizon for bikes, eventually settling for a couple of tandems, two singles, and a rickshaw!

Xi’an is, thankfully, simplistically set out on a grid of roads, with the main N-S-E-W all joining in the middle at a giant Bell Tower. There’s a large city gate at each point of the compass so it’s pretty easy to know roughly where you are. We were enjoying the views (and freewheeling up the ramps on the tandems) until we got to the halfway point of our journey at the North Gate, where some helpful-looking bike-hire service employee told us that the rear tyre of one of the tandems needed pumping up (not minding that the rear of the other tandem was as bald as Vin Diesel).

So, after thanking the guy we got on our way. Less than half a km later we were cycling along merrily then heard a “POP!”... and noticed the recently-inflated tyre had just burst! So while V and I cycled on to drop back the bike and get help, poor Meagan and Dave set off by foot for the remaining 6.5 kms round the city walls!

We got back to the hire centre and explained what had happened, and they radioed for help. Sow e sat and waited, assuming we’d see M&D being brought round, complete with busted bike, on one of the golf cart-type vehicles also ferrying round tourists. Instead, in a time that didn’t seem enough to have covered 6.5 kms on foot we saw them come round the corner pushing the bust bike!

Someone from the hire centre set off on our tandem to swap it with theirs, they then rode in to meet us! So we headed back to the YMCA, all looking forward to the belated chance to shower and change before heading out for the evening, some of us to the Tang Dynasty Dumpling Banquet & Concert, others off for dinner or a chance to catch up on sleep.

Got back to the hotel some time after 6... still no power or water! By this point, at the wrong end of a 17-hour train journey and subsequent 14 kms bike ride, some of us were less than fragrant, so we just went for the dry clean before heading to the banquet and concert.

The style of food and entertainment apparently dates back to the Tang dynasty (as you might expect, this being 618 – 907 AD) when it would have been enjoyed only by the Royal Family. We sat down to something like 20 different types of dumplings (boiled/fried, meat/fish/veggie, /savoury/sweet), followed by a traditional musical performance in costume. Although maybe not everyone’s cup of tea it was yet another of those things I know I’ll never get the chance to do again, so I guess I was glad to be there!

After the evening’s entertainment we walked back to the hotel, elated to see we’d been reunited with both power and water, and made our way, exhausted, to bed!

Meet the pandas!

Tuesday 10th April 2007

Panda day today!! Up and out to catch 8.30 bus to the panda reserve, arriving there at about 10 to head straight for the nursery and enclosures. What beautiful creatures! (and what a lovely place, very clean and green!). V passed up the chance to cuddle the baby panda of 7 months (for about 1000 Yuan, £65ish) she paid 400 Yuan to stroke one of the bigger ones (2 years old).

As lovely as the panda was she couldn’t really have cared less whether or not V was stroking her! Still, she maintained it was a lovely experience (V, not the panda) and one she’ll never get the chance to repeat.

We spent a couple of hours walking round and taking loads of pictures. This was the first really sunny day we’d had so it was a joy just to be there.

After wandering round all the enclosures we hopped back on the bus into Chengdu city centre where a few of us were trying to satisfy our cravings for the real taste of China – pizza. Sadly the chosen restaurant was closed so we took a 25-minute detour to another pizza place – also closed. Eventually we ambled, by this point ravenous, into ‘Grandma’s Kitchen’ next door to the second closed pizza place, and had a beautiful burger and chips!

Now, please don’t misunderstand me, I love my Chinese food, but by this point some of us, me included, were craving some good old-fashioned Western fast food!

While I was out doing this V was back at the hotel as the tummy was still a bit delicate. But she was delighted when I turned up just after 5 with a marguerita pizza and some fruit. After a quick turnaround we’re off to the packed train station. After jostling our way through the merry crowds we finally made it to the rather grubby and packed waiting room. We didn’t have to wait long as Eric had secured us “VIP” passage so were soon packed on to a couple of comedy golf carts and sped off into the distant platform where our train awaited.
Sadly this was the worst train yet, not to mention the longest! Eventually, after a couple of hours’ nattering and playing cards, we resorted to iPods/earplugs and settled down for the night.

The Buddha and the Opera...

Monday 9th April 2007

The worst of the illness having subsided this morning, V felt weak and nauseous but was at least no longer sick. We ad an early start to catch the bus to Leshan, the site of the Giant Buddha, the world’s largest sitting Buddha and at 1200 years old pretty ancient too!

At this point in time it’s probably right to mention how blessed we are to have in our group two pharmacists, a doctor, a paramedic and a medical researcher. They’ve helped keep us on the straight and narrow!

The bus ride took two hours and we arrived in Leshan to a second day’s rain. Having split up into taxis our driver unfortunately got the wrong end of the stick and dropped us on the wrong side of the river. After a few confused minutes in the wrong place we caught another one and got dropped off at the right place.

From there we walked up to the entrance of the grounds and made our way up the hillside to the head of the Giant Buddha. This was amazing and we learnt about its history. We then proceeded to walk down one side of it and back up the other. We then had the chance to look round some of the other temples in the grounds before taking a taxi back to the bus to head back to Chengdu.

After an afternoon nap we headed for the Szichuan Opera. We took taxis to a lovely part of town where there was a nice shopping street which we meandered along before taking our seats for the ‘Opera’ in a small open-air theatre. While awaiting the start of the opera we were served jasmine tea and peanuts and offered massages – not the dodgy sort this time!

Reluctant at first, once we’d seen some of the others being pummelled for the princely sum of 50 Yuan, we were both well up for it! After this the opera had a lot to live up to but we weren’t disappointed. There were about 6 or 7 different acts. The first was a sort of kung-fu act, followed by a woman with a large puppet doll, then the man who made shadow puppets with his hands. He was AMAZING! This was followed by the comedy knife-throwers who took one of our party, Rob, up to be their stooge, and blindfolded him while they ‘threw’ knives at him, placing them in the board around his head.

Then came the fire-spitting, face-changing act. In this the actors change the masks on their faces so fast that you blink and miss it. No-one knows how they do it! There were a couple more acts filling in and before we knew it the opera was over and we were heading back home in a taxi.

Things that went bump in the night...

Easter Day, Sunday 8th April 2007

Having slept since 9pm the previous night, V woke up refreshed, while I had a slightly later night, catching up with the latest Premier League football live on TV then a virtuoso performance from a visiting ‘masseuse’ in the next bedroom...

We were up and about before long and heading for the ‘Western’ part of the city, much cleaner and clearly geared towards visitors. Here, we finally reached Starbucks and enjoyed a leisurely Easter breakfast, the first such since the start of Lent some 6 weeks previous!

From here we wandered back to the hotel to check out then board the bus to Chengdu. This bus journey was an uncomfortable 4 1/2 hours plus another 30 mins’ taxi ride at the other end. When we reached out hotel at around 5.30pm we were very pleased to find it clean and comfortable. After the usual quick wash & brush up we were off out to dinner. I went off with the majority of the group to sample the local speciality of Szichuan hotpot while V went with the group’s other veggies, Elise and Caroline, to see if they could find the pizza place trumpeted in the Lonely Planet Guide.

After another half hour’s walk and plenty more quizzical moments they reached their destinations and were most pleased with the outcome. Sadly this, or at least something, was to take its revenge later when V got back to the hotel, but not wanting to dwell too much on that, I’ll tell you a bit about the hotpot. The basic idea, so far as I can recall, is that you have two pots of hot, basically, soup, into which you put pretty much whatever’s available to cook. This included lots of different meats, veg, all kinds of things. Good to try but I don’t know I’d go mad for it again!

Then it was a leisurely roll back to the hotel after eating too much as usual to attend the patient...

Beethoven meets the A Team...

Easter Saturday, 7th April 2007

Awaking to rain on our first miserable day’s weather we disembarked the boat, after a short delay, at the ghost town of Fengdu. There was something very eerie about making our way onto deserted dry land on a grey, rainy day to the strains of Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’. After another ‘A Team’-style minibus ride up in the mountains we joined the public bus on its trip to the municipality of Chongqing, just the 32 million inhabitants...

After using the journey to catch up on sleep we arrived in Chongqing around lunchtime to be greeted by yet more steep steps to the hotel where we dropped off baggage and went for another sumptuous budget banquet of a group lunch.

A few pounds heavier but some Yuan lighter we waddled back to the hotel before heading to the city to experience the sights and sounds of a Saturday afternoon in one of China’s biggest cities. We visited the Arhat Temple, home to Buddhist monks, and observed them taking their lessons before taking the cable car back and forth across the Yangtse to catch different views of the city.

Then back to the hotel and to bed, after re-stocking supplies!

On a slow boat in China...

Good Friday, 6th April 2007

Up at 5.45am after a rough night’s sleep, awoken in the night a few times due to rock-hard bed and runny noses probably from the bugs we were sharing the beds with!

Got off boat at Wushan and onto a smaller boat to do the tour of the Little Three Gorges. We were joined on this cruise, like on the other boat, by better-off Chinese tourists and before we’d even set foot on the deck they were all bundling into the lounge to grab the windows seats, lighting up despite all the ‘no smoking’ signs! So we retreated outside and enjoyed the stunning views!

We made a couple of stops including one at a Buddhist temple a steep walk up the cliff and the other to do the Little Three Gorges tour, where we saw the most breathtaking scenery. Throughout the tour we passed marker after marker of where the water would eventually reach once the dam is completed. It’s very difficult to try and get a handle on how much has already been flooded, the number of towns/communities displaced and under the water is staggering.

In the afternoon we stopped off at a ‘new town’ (i.e. new because the old one, further down the hill, had been flooded), Fengjie. We had some time to kill so sauntered off the boat for a wander round. We’d remembered there was supposed to be a museum so with time to kill and a Mandarin phrasebook to hand V approached a local and asked where it was.

Somehow she understood and led us up the road to the museum. From the outside it was most unassuming but we felt that after all the effort of getting there we’d have a look round. A bloke of about 60 took us upstairs to the exhibits, and what a surprise was in store!

Armed with just a phrasebook and no lingua franca, he proceeded to give us a guided tour through its 15 rooms, showing us artefacts rescued before the flooding, vases, plates, bowls etc, dating back thousands of years; historical documents relating to more recent history; models of how the city had looked pre-flood and how it looks post-flood.

The sheer scale of the whole project and its effect on the area is just staggering. More staggering still is the way in which the locals accept, even seem pleased, with what it’s done to their part of the country. I guess this is ‘progress’, China style.

In fairness to them, I think it’s given the younger generation the chance to escape repeating the cycle of their parents’ lives. When the tour was finished we bought the guide book. When we started reading we discovered that our guide, clearly the curator, had spent his entire life savings rescuing, preserving, setting up and running the museum, and he was just an ordinary member of the public. It’s hard to imagine anyone being so selfless in our culture.

We rejoined the boat before the scheduled 6.15 departure and later sat down to dinner with the rest of the group, swapping stories about our afternoons.

This was followed by a Qi-Gong lesson from Eric, showing us the stance to adopt to harness our ‘Qi’. Then to bed in preparation for yet another early start.

Hanging with the Wuhan clan...

Thursday 5th April 2007

Woken at 7.15 by Eric, we were up and off the train by 7.45 in Wuhan. First impressions were that it was dirtier and smellier than the other places we’d visited. We walked for a few minutes across town to the bus station and clambered aboard our transport for the next few hours.

An interesting system where bus timetables are concerned: basically you have a nominal departure time which becomes adjusted to the time when the bus fills up.

Anyway, we’re finally getting some sun, the telly’s on in the bus and we’re being serenaded by the sounds of locals hawking all around us – yum.

Today also seems to commemorate some sort of festival and we’re told it’s when the Chinese burn incense and fake money for the dead. After a long, uncomfortable journey accompanied by the unmistakeable sounds of Chinese karaoke classics at head-splitting volume and even more hawking, we arrive in Yichang. It appears quite a pretty city with some nice parks but also a load of derelict buildings. It was also the first place we’d seen any churches. The one we entered was Catholic but very different from those found in Europe, very plain with no gold whatsoever, just some paintings of saints, of course with ‘dewesternised’ faces. Back near the river Yangtse and we watched the kites being flown expertly at great heights.

Later we took the bus to the departure point for our boat tour of the Yangtse and the Three Gorges Dam. The bus driver was great and took us really close. We saw an enormous amount of this immense structure. It’s hard to comprehend the scale of it. At one point we were stuck in a traffic jam but couldn’t figure out why we’d stopped until Eric told us we had to wait while some detonation of explosives took place. When it did happen we were right up close to the action!

We boarded the ferry about 6.15, and settled into our plush accommodation with smelly, but Western, toilets, and after a bite to eat settled down for the night ahead of an early start for the visit to the Little Three Gorges in the morning.

Tai-Chi and more trains...

Wednesday 4th April 2007

After a very leisurely morning (lie-in and pack-up) we went for a wander round a very chilly Yangshuo. We mooched around for a couple of hours before V jumped at the chance of a Tai-Chi lesson with Teresa so off they went with Jason the instructor.

From here we headed back to the hotel then on a bus back to the train station. This was before we took another overnight train, this time to Wuhan. The journey was far less eventful than last time. Once on the train the time passed chatting and playing cards before getting into the usual routine of iPod/earplugs to drown out the noise then to sleep...

Farming, China style...

Tuesday 3rd April 2007

Got up, eventually, at 8.45am.  Despite an early night and a long sleep getting up isn't any easier!  Met the others in the lobby and went to get our bikes from the hire place.  A dubious array of bikes if ever there was one!  We were lucky enough to espy and blag the only 2 bikes up front with front and rear suspension and gears!

A few others managed to get mountain bikes but the rest had push bikes, with one couple taking on a tandem!

We headed off slightly apprehensive, bearing in mind the fund we'd had travelling by road thus far, we were sure to be in for an adventure.  Before a minute had passed we had to cross a busy road.  Guessing who had right of way seemed to be all part of the fun.

So off we headed into the countryside.  It was very beautiful and we were so close to everything.  Coming off the main road, we passed through small villages - with many "hello; goodbyes" from everyone we passed.  A lot of the houses had red banners surrounding the doors - Eric said this was in celebration of the spring festival.

The houses in general were extremely basic, with just a couple of rooms downstairs, with glass in the windows if you're very lucky.  Very little in the way of furniture and a TV.  Upstairs, the buildings were virtually open and more often than not had washing hanging up.  The countryside was mostly fields/paddy fields/orange groves with karsts in the near distance.  We saw many people working the fields, often with very skinny oxen.

One of the highlights was passing a kindergarten all the children rushing to greet us from inside the gates, shouting "hello" while we replied with "ni hao", enjoying their smiles in return.  It was amazing that every time we stopped we'd be greeted by old ladies emerging from the undergrowth to offer us postcards/souvenirs/trinkets.  They proved most persistent...

Stopping for lunch at Moon Hill, a place where a natural hole through a karst had occurred, we then split up for the afternoon to go their separate ways, some to climb Moon Hill while some of us went to visit a local "Water Cave" with Eric.  This proved to be quite the adventure from the very beginning as we were packed into a smaller and even more rickety version of the A Team Van and were driven at extremely high speed to the cave across very rough terrain.

We arrived, safely, after our white-knuckle ride 20 minutes later, quite in need of the loo... until we caught a smell of the facilities.  Still, needs must, so you close your eyes and your nose and, well, you know...

Anyway, back to the cave entrance and by this time we were sporting particularly attractive (not to mention useless) red plastic bags to protect our feet from getting too wet, before receiving hard hats of various shapes, sizes and quality.  From here we entered the water cave via the "boat", well, a kind of raft with sides, really.  After having to duck to get into the caves we disembarked the boat and wound our merry if very un-health-and-safety way round a not very well lit but beautiful underground cave.  The pinnacle was he underground waterfall at the end, beautiful but un-photographable due to the light (well that's my excuse).  Back out the way we came quicker than going in as by now the plastic bags had disintegrated, we drove back in the A Team Van and then biked back to town before a quick clean-up before heading back to the veggie restaurant with everyone in tow this time.  After dinner we took a wander down the street for some shopping and the bargaining, something which took some getting used to.

Then to bed.

Off the train into the town...

Monday 2nd April 2007

Where to begin? After a surprisingly good night's sleep - in bed by 7 - awake for a 'midnight feast' at 10 then sleeping through (occasionally waking up to turn over and prevent complete numbness of body) Eric woke us at 6am as we drew into a very wet Guilin.

After making our way through the station we hopped on a bus to head for Yangshuo.  Most took the opportunity to take in the scenery (or catch up on sleep if we're being honest) while the others watched the driving through parted fingers.  After a while we came upon the breathtaking limestone karsts, huge 'bruises' of rock which appeared out of nowhere like lumps on a cartoon character's face!

Upon arrival in Yangshuo we were delighted to be met by a hotel with the traveller's favourite luxury - Western toilets!  The Hotel Explorer is just off the town's tourist-aimed West Street, lined with restaurants and shops all aiming to persuade you to part with your hard-earned.  Some wisely took advantage of the cheap Gore-Tex coats to protect from yet more rain, but the change in humidity was a welcome break!

In the afternoon we headed for the River Li in another bus and spent a couple of hours' boat ride admiring the spectacular scenery.

After an equally adventurous bus ride back we were deposited on West Street where we agreed to go our own ways and then re-convene in the hotel's bar later than evening.

We headed for the vegetarian restaurant 'Pure Lotus' with three others from the group for another sumptuous bargain banquet of chilli broccoli, shredded fried vegetables, caramelised taro, fried pumpkin in sesame and sweet and sour aubergine.

We then met up with most of the rest of the gang in the hotel bar for a bit more food and drink before retiring early in preparation for a reasonably early start tomorrow for the bike ride.  Thus far Yangshuo reminds us of Banff in that it's quite small but lively and friendly.

Heading inland...

Sunday 1st April 2007

A very early start precluded breakfast but we were bussed to the ferry departure pier quickly and through baggage.  Before long we were on the hydrofoil and having a munch.  It gave us an opportunity to chat to the others as we were seated all over the place in the boat.  V took the chance to catch up on some sleep missed from the previous night but I stayed awake nattering the whole time, quelle surprise!

After collecting more passport stamps coming through Chinese immigration we were introduced to our guide, Eric, immediately.  On the bus trip to Guangzhou he gave us a fascinating mini history lesson, before we dumped the bags in a local hotel and headed for lunch, a lovely mix of Canton meat and veggie dishes, with the egg & shrimp and pork & cashew nuts proving very popular!

After a brief stop at the supermarket, during which we had our first experience of the 'fresh' food on sale (live frogs, turtles and tanks of fish) and picked up some supplies for the princely sum of about 80p we headed back to the hotel to pick up the bags and then bundled into taxis for the train station.

Our first experience of taxis in this country preceded our first experience of Chinese railways.  Both are quite something.  Lanes on the road are a state of mind while the train station was just heaving!  The amount of people there was just staggering!  Our group had to form a kind of scrum to get through!  It was a bit like being part of a tiny stream becoming part of a torrent, where personal space just doesn't exist.  Couple this with the heat and humidity and you've got some sticky moments!

When you make it to the door it's the quickest security procedure ever as you whip off your rucksack, get shoved through and chuck it on the X-ray machine, run through the scanner and collect it on the other side before someone else gets there.  Eric managed to blag his way into the special lounge for us, which is apparently reserved for pregnant women and the like, where we took a breather before re-joining the heaving mass of humanity heading for the train.

On the train and suffice to say it's nothing like the trains here, for all the criticism we (rightly) give them.  Check out the pictures at the top for an idea.  Like a long corridor, each cubicle has 6 bunks and a very thin corridor at their end.  Being a hard sleeper the beds lived up to their name, and I won't even start on the toilets... for now.  Let's just say they go in for the whole unisex toilet idea here in a big way!

Oh well, this is travelling, China-style and we love it!

Sunrise over the Himalayas...

Friday 30th March/Saturday 31st March 2007

All well so far, the trip to Heathrow went pretty well, the flight to Amsterdam fine although the landing was a bit bumpy, bouncing into the air again on touchdown!

The transfer was easy enough though there was plenty of security to get through.  Food the usual plane fare but V as usual seems to get the best of it with the veggie option... must remember that for the next time we fly!

...skip forward a few hours, the usual in-flight "entertainment", snoozing and all that, until...

End of flight, 8.30am local time in Hong Kong on Saturday 31st March, we arrive looking and feeling like death warmed up (plenty due to the temperature).  Thought largely uneventful the highlight of the very long flight was waking up to sunrise over the Himalayas!  WOW! (on the other hand, the lowlight was the turbulence reminiscent of Airplane!).

On arrival in HK airport helped out by a woman from the tourist office who took pity on our bedraggled state and gave us a map, pointing out what to go and see in our brief visit there, where to eat, that kind of thing.

Got to Booth Lodge and checked in by 10.30, having to pay a HK$200 deposit for everything, seemingly including paying for the deposit (not too sure about that...).

We fought through the jet-lag and the overwhelming desire to sleep for the first time in what felt like weeks and headed off down Nathan Road, where I was approached by about 100 tailors all offering to make me a suit.  Seriously, look at me, do I look like the kind of guy who wears a suit?!

Got to the Star Ferry and sailed for Hong Kong Island, from where we took the bus to the Peak Train then the incredibly steep tramway to the Peak (see pic at top).  We had lunch there in a relatively expensive (hey, it's all relative around here!), swank-ish hotel despite looking like vagrants.

Back to Booth Lodge for the first meeting with the rest of our fellow travellers and a briefing (i.e. opportunity to pay more money I think!) before a quick nap and a shower (at last) and then off for a wander around the famous Temple Street night market and dinner.  Deciding that when in Rome... we headed to the Hard Rock Cafe for a final bit of Western food for a while!

After this we meandered back up the ever-busy streets to Booth Lodge for an early night before an early start as we went inland...