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Western Days

Whilst practically every backpacker we have met on the trip so far has craved a series of authentic local experiences, there is no doubting that most need a regular reminder of home comforts and lifestyles. I suspect that the frequency of these reminders - often dubbed "Western days" - is roughly proportional to the time spent away from home - so towards the end of the travels we spent increasing amounts of time treating ourselves to Pizza and cinemas! This was mostly my fault to be honest - Ursh has always been more open to the local cuisine and entertainment than I, although neither of us could deal with the local karaoke....

Sadly cinema is China is of course state controlled - so only selected western movies are allowed. Unfortunately one of these was "Battle Los Angeles", which we decided to see as it was the only film in English available. I'm not sure what the Chinese censors deemed to be acceptable about this film, but if I was being cynical (and I am) I would say that it must be an attempt to promote local cinema by way of comparison. At least the seats were comfy and we got free popcorn!

Our trip across China looks like a giant zig-zag which is attempting to tick off as many touristy sites as possible (although we missed Hong Kong, Macau and Shanghai as we had so far overdosed on large Asian cities). Leaving the Yangtze river for Xi'an, we headed straight for the Terracotta warriors, found by accident in the seventies.

In the way that only tyrannical despots can really manage, the warriors creation was ordered by  the Emporer Qin, as well as enormous mausoleums and other treasures that cost countless lives in their creation. The warriors themselves were incredible, with amazing detailing and the quantity present giving the area a powerful feel. The only issue was the venue, as to protect the exceptionally fragile clay figures it is of course impossible to get close to them, and the ever present crowds as found at any of China's major tourist attractions makes getting photographs tricky. Fortunately there are warriors that are on display at the Xian museum which are much more accessible.

Xi'an is not just famous for the warriors, but there are also other historical features including a 14km long city wall (Murphys law states that we chose the coldest, windiest day for a partial lap....) and also many pagodas and the like. To further increase the tourist appeal, there are many manicured parks, including one by the "big goose pagoda" which had a nightly fountain to music display, which like many new Chinese attractions managed to be both impressive and just a bit cheesy.

Big Goose pagoda

Despite the tourist bias of many of the parks, its good to see that much of their usage is from locals having fun and exercising. At almost any time their will be a large group of people doing tai chi, line dancing, aerobics or even practising with their swords.

Sword Practice in Xian Park

We booked ourselves onto our final train journey when leaving Xi'an for Beijing, and whilst the train was again punctual, clean and tidy, the overnight journey felt longer than we hoped due to sharing the cabin with a man whose clothes managed to stink out the cabin with stale cigarette smoke, and he also had a grim smokers snoring habit. We were of course very keen to get to the Beijing hostel we had booked, and managed to get a very early night to compensate for the lack of sleep on the train.

After our stay in Chongqing we were apprehensive about Beijing, as we had heard stories about shocking air pollution and dust problems, as well as expected cold temperatures in March. Whilst these are certainly issues that Beijing residents have to face, we found that the temperatures were chilly but ok, we had sunny sky's almost all the time, and the slight breeze that was present seemed to blow the pollution largely away. Beijing has an incredible number of tourist attractions, so unless you stayed for a year its important to pick out the favourite sites for any visit.

We visited the wall at two locations (the hoped for long distance walk along the wall didn't happen due to access issues):

Badaling is perhaps the best restored section (some say over restored), and was amazing, not least due to the crowds everywhere. Much of the wall is located on hills, and as such exploring the wall involves walking up and down thousands of steps, some of which are so steep that a single stumble could result in a massive fall, most likely taking hundreds of other tourists with you.

The other section we visited was at Mutianyu, where the wall has also been restored, but for reasons unknown there are far smaller crowds present. This was much the preferred site for us, simply because of the extra space there is to move around and get photos.

The Olympic stadium is also well worth a visit, and I found that the scale of the birds nest stadium quite surprising. The area outside of the stadiums is quite busy with roller blader's and kite flyer's, but unfortunately the stadiums don't get to host many events, and some locals have suggested that perhaps the amazing cost of the games wasn't money that well spent. It is however certainly a site that seems to inspire pride in the local visitors, which is perhaps reason enough in itself.

The centre of town is dominated by the sites of the Forbidden city, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, and Tianamen Square. Whilst these are amazing sites which we did visit, we were by this stage well in need of another western day, and Pizza hut beckoned!

Forbidden City from Jinshaling Park

Inside the Forbidden City

Gate of Heavenly Peace from Tiananmen Square - with the omnipresent Chairman Mao

Six months after setting off from Heathrow, we are now back in the UK following a lengthy flight (with fantastic views over the Gobi desert, Ulan Bator (Mongolia), Lake Baikal, The Ural mountains and St Petersburg). It has of course been an amazing trip, and its impossible not to feel privileged and very lucky to have been able to undertake it.

Dam Good*

* - Second hand gag from Yangtze cruise guide!

Every country has its
"must do" list of things to do for visitors, and for China perhaps
number 2 on that list (after the great wall which we haven't seen yet),
is a journey down the Yangtze river. Getting the facts and figures out
of the way first, the Yangtze is Asias's longest river (3rd in the
world after the Nile and the Amazon), features the worlds largest dam
(in terms of width), the largest fresh water lock system, the largest
hydroelectric power system, and as a result of the dam, required the
relocation of a staggering 1.39 million people (more if you believe non
government figures). Perhaps the greatest reasons for visiting are the
three gorges sections, which are dubbed as China's grand canyon.

Arriving in the monstrous urban conurbation of Chongqing (30+ million
people), we had a couple of days to site see before joining the boat. I
personally found Chongqing a difficult place to like - its busy and
smelly, and has shocking air polution (apparently by EU standards,
99.9% of Chinas urban residents breath in air of unnaceptable
standards). One of the highlights of a visit to the city is supposed to
be the local favourite dish, which is "hot pot", where you place your
ingredients into a hot bowl of spicy broth, and then when cooked, eat
with chopsticks. Unfortunately we must have chosen the wrong
restaraunt, as all our chosen ingredients arrived already cooked in a
bowl, everything tasted weirdly of soap, and we both had to spend ages
picking the chilli seeds out of our teeth afterwards. (Fortunately, we
have had much better hot pots since). On the plus side, the staff at
the hostel were as friendly and helpful as ever.

We both had a great
time on our cruise ship, and felt guilt free at doing practically
nothing for three days other than watch the view from the deck. The
three gorges themselves were great, but the highlight was the excursion
to the lesser three gorges on the Dani river, which had almost vertical
cliffs many hundreds of metres tall. The dam itself was also
impressive, as were the massive ship locks (each 250m long) that the
cruise ship squeezed into, along with ships carrying coal and other
freight.

Please close the door - its freezing!

For the past 6 months we've had our return flights booked from China on
the basis that we would sort out the travel arrangements on the way. It
was looking likely we would need to rearrange our flights as web
searches indicated we needed to apply for the China visa from our home
country, and the Chinese embassy in Hanoi said we had no chance (in a
nice way!) Getting back to the hostel in Hanoi after visiting the
embassy, we said in a more or less last resort way that were trying to
get into China, when the hostel staff replied that it would be no
problem, and that they could book us a train ticket (1st class
sleeeper) and a taxi to the train station. All we had to do was hand
over the passports, and five days later they came back with all visa's
stuck to the relevant pages - easy!

The train left Hanoi late in
the evening, and we found that we were sharing the four berth cabin
with a Chinese lady from Beijing , who's English was perfect. It turned
out she had lived in Vancouver for 10 years, before returning to China,
no doubt to take part in the exceptional growth that the country is
enjoying at the moment. She gave us some excellent tips for places to
go and things to do, as well as helping us through immigration in China
(at 2 in the morning after 3 hours sleep). This was a trend that was
set to continue as all the Chinese people we have met (bar one) have
been exceptionally helpful, and are very keen that foreign tourists
like us enjoy their trip.

The train terminated in Nanning, which is
as the guidebook says a provincial town with little to do other than
ramble around. Its also massive, and crowded (perhaps not surprising in
a country with 1.3 billion residents), but perhaps the greatest
surprise to us was being openly stared at. This is common for western
tourists in China, but seemed especially true in Nanning where few
tourists visit. Its not an aggressive or unpleasant stare, just a look
of curiosity, which if met with a smile is usually returned the same
way.

We'd heard lots of stories of difficulties with communication in
China, and we found our experiences no different. We booked our onward
train travel without too much of a problem (after working out which of
the endless halls of the massive station sold tickets) by simply
writing down the name of the town we wanted to travel to (Gui Lin) and
then a date and a time, but finding food was more tricky. Lunch was ok,
as we found a noodle shop in one of the endless shopping malls that had
pictures on the wall we could point at, but dinner proved difficult.
Eventually we found a restaraunt which had quite a few people eating,
and prepared to point at what they were having, when we were
unexpectedly handed a menu with english text (even restaraunts in some
of the hotels we had visited didn't have this). We wouldn't have
starved of course, as Pepsi co and Macdonalds seem to be on a mission
to take China's high streets over, with fast food everywhere.

Getting
to the relatively close town of Gui Lin (a modest 6 hour train ride
away - China is the size of the USA after all), we checked in to the
friendly "Wada hostel" and walked around the city which has stunning
"Karst" mountains everywhere. From here we carried out two excursions:

The imaginatively titled Dragons Backbone Rice Terraces are an amazing
feat of engineering where "steps" have been cut into hillsides (some of
which are 1000m high) to allow rice to cultivated. The effect is both
impressive and beautiful, even in the misty conditions we saw. To get
there we had to take a couple of local buses, and were met by a local
lady who ran a hotel on the side of a mountain, who helped us get on
the right bus. Needless to say part of the deal was that we followed
her to the hotel, but as everyone seems so trustworthy we went with it.
The bus journey was quite an experience, as to get to all the local
villages, it made a frankly terrifying detour up a series of crumbling
dirt roads improbably cut into some of the most unstable hill sides I'
ve seen in a while.....

The Tian Ti hotel turned out to be one of our
favourite stops. The lady who bought us there proved to be a real human
dynamo, who led us up the hill, cooked our massive dinner, sorted the
rooms and made us breakfast, all for less than £20. The only problem
was the cold, as like almost everywhere in China, it appeared that
heating as well as sealed doors and windows are a scandalous western
bourjois invention, and the whole place was constantly freezing. All we
could do was put on all our clothes, and borrow duvets and blankets
from the unused other bedrooms.

Our other excursion was to the town of
Yuangshou, which has perhaps the most scenic location for a town I've
ever seen. We had a great time here despite the constant hassle from
touts, and everything here was easy, as to suit the many tourists there
are western menus and food everywhere. Sadly on the bus back to Gui Lin
we had our worst local encounter on the trip so far. As I moved my
backpack half way through the journey, I saw the hand of the youth in
front of us slipped between the seat in front, evidently having been in
my backpack. After a slightly heated exchange with neither of us
understood what the other was saying, my camera which had been in the
backpack "accidentally" dropped on the floor (as well as the travel
power adaptor rather surprsingly). At the next stop he got off the bus,
along with the person who had been sat behind, evidently they had been
working as a team.

Chinglish

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of China......

Too Many Zeros

Singapore and NZ - about 2 currency : 1 GBP
Auz and USA - about 1.6ish
dollar : 1GBP
Malaysia - about 5 Ringits : 1 GBP
Thailand - about 50
Baht : 1 GBP
Camodia - everyone uses dollars, the Riel is fixed to the
dollar at approx 4000 R : 1US

So far its been pretty easy to do a
quick bit of mental arithmetic to get and idea of costs, so its a bit
of a shock when arriving in Vietnam to find that there are approx 31
000 Dong to the pound. Simply ordering a coffee entails counting the
zero's on the menu, a situation not helped when some cafe's and
shopkeepers "help" by ignoring the last three zero's on the ubiquotous
pocket calculators that are used to show the prices of goods to the
linguistically challenged tourists. Even the shortlived thrill of
becoming a millionaire every time you visit a cashpoint wanes as you
try and count a thick wadge of 50K notes.....

Much as its great to
immerse ourselves in a dynamic and exciting city like Hanoi, sometimes
the frenetic pace of life can get a bit too much. The city is home to
what seems like millions of scooters, and it becomes almost impossible
to even cross the road. The only resort left is to do as the locals do,
and cross the roads one lane at a time, often with cars and bikes
whizzing past on all sides. Several times we ended up being helped
across the road by friendly locals without whom we might never have
made it back to the hostel!

Vietnam has taken to selling tourism with
a zeal that is remarkable, even by the high standards set in other
parts of south east asia. Every other business seems to be a tourist
biased restaraunt, tour company or trinket shop, and the sales
techniques are undeniably pushy, with touts making the presence felt
virtually 24/7. At one stage Ursh was even offered a small (surprised
looking) child, to take home as a souvenir!

Through the deservedly
highly rated "Little Hanoi Hostel", we booked our onward travel to
China and the relevant Visa's. As scams are rife, we decided to use our
trusted hostel to book everything, so while waiting for the visa's to
be processed, they also arranged our three day tour to Ha Long bay
marine park.

Ha Long Bay is home to thousands of islands, the vast
mojority of which take them form of peaks that seem to rise vertically
from the sea (Karst geography apparently). There are also endless caves
present, and whole area is simply stunning, especially when viewed from
on board one of the boats that tourists can stay on. In addition to
staying on the very comfortable boat, we got to do some canoeing, and
also managed to get some walking in on the mountains, all of which was
a great antidote to Hanoi's mania.