If God made everything, he must be Chinese

So, it’s taken me ages to get caught up with adding another post on here, apologies. I put it down to the fact that we’re now back in teaching full swing and I haven’t had a chance to get all of my photos sorted to put on the blog, but anyways. Here are some highlights of the last part of our little jaunt around China, and include a trip to the seaside, a beer factory, the bund and a Michelin-starred restaurant….

First off, Qingdao……completely unlike any Chinese city I’ve been to(except for Maybe Harbin), with it’s cobbled streets, Catholic churches and clean air. I could have sworn we were in Europe somewhere…

After Qingdao, it was then onto Shanghai for a bit of: wandering around the French concession, visiting the (disturbing and cruel) dog market, buying amazing quality fake DVD’s, trying and failing (twice) to go to the propaganda museum (first attempt we couldn’t find it, second attempt it was closed), visiting the bund, a trip to a nearby water village, eating dim sum and Chinese new year fireworks….

Apologies if this blog post starts to resemble and RSPCA appeal in the next few pics, but these dogs were too cute not to include….

The rest of the images are from my phone so the quality is a bit poor

The coolest apple shop ever

After our time in Shanghai, we flew to Hong Kong for a few days of Western comforts. I didn’t really get any good pictures on my camera, we are going back there in June so will take some good ones then, I did however get some pictures of our trip to the cheapest Michelin Starred restaurant in the world, Tim Ho Wan in Mongkok. It was well worth the 3 hour wait as the food was amazing. When we arrived at the restaurant we were given a paper menu with a number on it and told it would be about 2 1/2 hours, so we were then able to go for a walk around the nearby malls and busy streets. We had a total of 10 dishes, (we expected the dishes would be small when we ordered which is why we ordered so many, but the portions were huge!) and it cost us about 15 quid. Highlights for us were the vermicelli rolls, the custard-filled Baozi and the bbq pork buns. It was, in a word: amazeballs.

The crowds outside Tim Ho Wan

Naylor-B eagerly awaiting our food

The food arrives!

These buns are fantastic, BBQ pork buns, epic!

After Hong Kong we ended up staying two nights in Shenzhen as we couldn’t get a train back to Changde until a day later than we’d planned, this is the most exciting picture I have from Shenzhen…..

The next day we had the torture of a 13 hour train journey, hard seater, over night. Minimal sleep, maximum discomfort. Not sure if this girl had the right idea or not…..

And that was the end of our travels! We had a pretty amazing time and packed in quite a lot, too much to put on a blog really. However we are now back to teaching and awaiting going back to Hong Kong and then back to Blighty!

I shall post again if anything interesting happens…….who knows when that might be.

In a bit!

So, once again I have been completely slack at keeping my blog up to date. Apologies to the handful of people that follow the inane outpourings of my brainbox. We’ve done quite a bit since my last blog post so I’ll write a little bit about the most interesting bits.

We arrived in Beijing on the 7th after another long-ass night train journey, during which me and Kate hardly got any sleep because one of the men we were sharing a compartment with snored all night, sounding like a pig with a bad case of the flu. Bleary eyed and knackered we stepped out into the insanity of Beijing West train station and tried to find the nearest Metro station, which wasn’t the easiest task in the world. But, once we found it, it was a lot easier than having to find our hostel on foot, like we had done with the majority of our previous hostels. So being in the capital was showing it’s benefits immediately.

After checking into our hostel, the amazing Sanlitun hostel in the Chaoyang district of the city, we hopped on the metro and went to Tiananmen Square for a bit of a wander around. After going through countless security checks we got into the square which, considering there are so many armed guards about, was pretty uninteresting. You can go and see the Body of Chairman Mao in his glass coffin, if you can get up early enough to beat the crowds, but we’re pretty lazy so gave this “attraction” a miss. So we went back to the hostel, gorged ourselves on western food (there was an all you can eat buffet on, with all you can drink beer for 70 yuan, about 7 quid so we completely rinsed it) and got an early-ish night as we had booked to go on a tour of the great wall the following day.

We were up bright and early(ish) the next day, we were told to be in the lobby for 7:30 where we got our breakfast and then got on a coach which took us to the Wall. We opted to go to Mutianyu section of the wall, which had both restored and unrestored parts, wasn’t too far away and wasn’t teeming with tourists like the Badaling section is renowned to be. When we arrived we were told we had to pay for a cable car up to the top of the mountain, where we could get on the wall, and for a toboggan ride down (more on that later). So we took the cable car up to the wall and had about 3 hours up there, it was pretty amazing, especially as much of it was covered with snow. Although it was a pretty hard slog at times as there were so many steps, my legs felt like jelly by the time we came back down. The most amazing part was the unrestored section of the wall, past the sign that said “no entry for tourists” but we weren’t going to let a puny sign get in the way of our good times. Here’s some pictures:

Naylor-B on the wall

Some rebellious Yanks

Screw you signs! Trying to ruin our good times

Nice bit of Chinglish

Standard tourist photo-op

Naylor-B having a frolic on the wall

Wall hawkers. The militant looking one on the right tried to karate kick me, which was nice of her.

After we’d finished, we descended the mountain, Kate opted to take the cable car back down as she didn’t want to go on the toboggan and I (like the chivalrous gentleman that I am) left her to take it on her own as I had a hankering for a high-speed, near-death experience on the toboggan! It was a metal run that went all the way down the mountain, and you sit in a tiny plastic cart with a handle for the brake in the middle. It seemed strange that they would have this at the great wall, almost as though the great wall management committee (which definitely exists, as they bloody love bureaucracy over here) thought:

“there is no way people will be satisfied with a pile of crumbling rocks, after taking a one and a half hour bus journey to get here, how can we remedy this to ensure they feel like it was a worthwhile journey?” 

“I know! Let’s rebuild the wall and put a giant slide down the mountain! and erm, let’s open a Subway there as well, let’s face it riding a toboggan is enough to give anyone a hankering for a foot-long meatball marinara!” 

But I enjoyed the toboggan nevertheless and, in spite of the fact that I sliced my hand open on one when I was a kid in Llandudno, I was bombing it around the track. Once again I adopted a blatant disregard for signs (telling me to “slow down” pah, what did they know!? they were just bits of wood with writing on them) and had a much better time through doing so. 

I met Kate at the bottom of the mountain and we went to a nearby restaurant (not Subway) and met the rest of our coach group where we were provided with a banquet which was food closest to something resembling the Chinese food we get back home, with sweet and sour chicken, fried rice and, erm scrambled egg with tomatoes….

So with full bellies we got back onto the coach and went back to the hostel for another lazy evening of western food, music and booze (all cocktails were 18 yuan £1.80, we had Whiskey sours aplenty).

The next day we went into full tourist mode and managed to see all of the Forbidden City (a lot bigger than I thought it would be, and a lot less impressive), climb up Jinshan Hill, behind the forbidden city, where we got a view of the entire city(more impressive than being in the actual city and only cost 2 yuan each to go in) and we went to see the temple of heaven which was easily the most impressive thing in the city, and was nowhere near as busy. And after this we went to the pearl market, which is about 7 floors of everything you could ever want to buy (including pearls, whodathunkit?) and if we weren’t so knackered from all the walking we probably would have been (a bit) more interested, but here’s some pictures anyway.

Inside the Forbidden City

Tourists inside the city walls

Roof inside one of the buildings in the Imperial Garden

 (A very grainy) View of the city from JinShan hill

The Temple of Heavenly Peace (avec Naylor-B)

Temple doorway

The next day was a boringly long one, we had managed to get tickets to Haerbin on one of the fast trains, but it didn’t leave until 9:45 pm so after checking out of our room we were sat in the hostel bar eating western food (I think there’s a trend emerging here) until it was time to leave for the train station. For this train we went to the main Beijing train station, which was pretty heaving, what with Spring festival approaching. We were glad we got the train tickets, however the train that we got was a seater only train so it meant we spent 9 hours sat upright in uncomfortable seats. Not much fun.

As the journey went on there was an LCD screen which displayed the speed we were travelling at (around 150 Km/h) and the temperature both inside and outside the train. When we first left Beijing the outside temperature was about -4°C and it gradually got colder and colder until we reached Haerbin. When we arrived, we stepped off the train at 6:00 am from the relatively balmy 18°C of the train interior, to the bitingly cold -24°C of Haerbin. It’s hard to explain just how cold it felt. I have never felt that cold in my life, and I’ve been to Scotland. I had on a t-shirt, shirt, jumper, hoodie, coat, scarf, gloves, hat, long johns and Jeans and I was still numb with the cold after about five minutes. It was so cold that the snot in my nose froze, it hurt to take deep breaths and my beard stuck to my scarf because of the condensation from my breath (Sexy, aren’t I?).

But it was an amazing city and, if it weren’t for the Chinese people everywhere, I could have sworn we were in Eastern Europe. The architecture has heavy influence from Russia (as it’s very close to the Russian border) and it feels like you’re in a different country. The main reason we were there, was evident all over the city and after an obligatory power nap in our amazingly warm hotel room (it’s like it’s the only place in China where they have discovered the joy of radiators) we went for an explore. 

We wandered around the streets of Haerbin which were dotted with Ice sculptures for the Ice festival, and made our way to the Songhua River, which snakes through the centre of the city. Where there was a massive entrance made out of ice, through which there were steps descending to the river which was frozen solid, on top of which were hawkers selling lots of warm clothing, horse and carriage rides across the river and tickets for the massive ice slides that had been built on the river banks. They also had lots of dance shows on in the walking streets of Haerbin, mainly consisting of elderly people, which were quite amusing to watch.

In the evening (after about an hour of trying) we managed to get a taxi to take us to the main area of the Ice Festival, in a part of the City called Sun Island. Although the entrance fee was a bit steep (about 30 quid each), it was incredible, I was amazed that everything we could see was actually made of ice. But at times it was quite hard to appreciate because it was just so damn cold. We had to keep moving at all times and had to go inside to warm up after about twenty minutes of walking around as it felt like we might die otherwise (no exaggeration…..maybe). Here’s some pictures:

Entrance to the snow and ice festival

The “Magical Colours” of the festival

Ice slides

Snow Yaks that you could pay to sit on and have a photo taken, didn’t fancy it myself

Dancers on walking street

Old lady dancer, she was the best.

Hanging out with the band

Golden Monk-Man

Warming up in the 70’s cafe. Don’t exactly know what made it 70’s, but they had bloody good cakes.

The next day we took a train back to Beijing (a soft sleeper this time) and spent the day at the Natural History Museum (which was a MASSIVE disappointment, if you’re going to Beijing don’t bother with it as it’s just plain shit) and wandering around the markets in the shopping district of Beijing, where I was planning to eat some fried bugs but saw the that the scorpions on the sticks were still alive so swiftly changed my mind, (maybe I’ll do it in Hong Kong).

We also bought our train tickets for Qingdao for the next day, which is where we are now. Shall be blogging soon about Qingdao and will try to keep this updated more often.

In a bit! 

So the past week has been a bit of a busy one for us, since the new year we’ve travelled a fair distance and seen some amazing sights.

We saw in the new year in comfort in a hostel in baoguo village which is at the foot of Emei mountain in Sichuan province. It wasn’t exactly a mental new year as we had just arrived and were pretty tired so had a few beers and watched some films.

The next day we started 2012 by going to nearby Leshan, which was about a two hour journey away, to see the biggest buddha in the world, he was a bit of a giant.

There was a path where you could descend down some windy-stepped paths to the buddhas feet. However before we indulged in our favourite pastime of queueing, we had a look around the temple that was near the Buddha’s head. It was a pretty amazing temple, I reckon that temples really make Christian churches look like they just couldn’t be arsed when they built them. They are so much more interesting, loads of amazing statues of buddha everywhere and like in the picture below, there was like a tower full of tiny fat buddhas, it looked like a Christmas tree, it was ace!

After looking around the temple, we joined the winding queue of Chinese tourists that led to the bottom of the buddha. The path was quite precarious, with tiny steps and a sheer drop to one side. Although there was a railing and plenty of Chinese tourists to cushion our fall, if we were to fall backwards or forwards. On the way down I managed to get some pictures of the buddha, however I was foiled by my own idiocy as I forgot to fully charge my camera battery the night before, and subsequently my camera died before I reached the bottom. Damn.

The next day we got up early(ish) and took a bus up Emei Shan. As we only had one day to explore the mountain (and the fact that we didn’t fancy trekking for hours), we opted to take the bus that got us as close to the summit as possible. It took 1.5 hours and the weather gradually changed as we ascended from overcast, to rainy, to heavy snow. When we got off the bus, it was bloody freezing and we were slipping everywhere, although luckily there were plenty of stalls where you could hire spikes for your shoes.

We walked for about half an hour to get to the cable car station, along the way there were tons of stalls selling everything from corn on the cob and hot dogs on a stick to mittens and some even hiring thick coats out. We opted for a hot dog each, mine was pretty spicy but it warmed me up a treat.

When we arrived at the cable car station we got to do a bit more queueing (whoop) and witnessed what happens when about a hundred Chinese tourists are unleashed into a cramped space (like a cable car) and all try to get the best spaces at the same time. It was insane, it’s what I imagine it’s like when the doors are opened on the first day of the Next sales or something. Loads of crazed people (women) dashing about trying to find the best bargains. While the dashing about by the Next shoppers is (sort of) justified, I see no sane reason as to why these tourists acted like this. Although it was pretty fun going in all elbows, pushing all the crazies out of the way.

When we arrived at the summit the visibility was pretty poor, which was a bit of a shame as there is a huge golden statue at the summit called “The 10-headed Bodhisattva Samatabhadra” (try saying that 3-times in a row) which is supposed to be amazing in the morning sunlight. We could see it a bit, but not in it’s full glory (as you can probably tell from the pictures). There were a few temples at the top which we had a nose around (and I got told I couldn’t take pictures) and they also had rows upon rows of padlocks, which couples get inscribed with their names and leave on mountains, not too sure why…..

After descending the mountain we were pretty knackered so got some food in our hostels freezing communal area and got an early night.

The next day we got a bus back to Chengdu and from there took a train to Xi’an, which was overnight so we went for soft sleeper again. The day we arrived in Xi’an we checked into the hostel then had a wander around the city (well wrapped up as we were now further north and there was a marked decrease in temperature) we walked to the Muslim quarter of the city and had a look around the market there, which was pretty good. Some of the food on offer looked delicious, amazing breads with designs stamped into them, hot apple juice, and kebabs, kebabs, kebabs. It’s a pretty cool city as it’s surrounded by the original city walls from thousands of years ago (probably restored) with a moat and everything. A bit different from some of the identikit Chinese cities that we have grown used to.

That evening we got some food in the hostel, we had chicken cooked with mushrooms and peppers, it was well tasty. We had some beers and the Hostel had a singer come in for some musical entertainment. He was pretty good, I guess KTV does serve some kind of purpose, monetary gain!

Yesterday we made our way to Xi’an’s main attraction, the terracotta warrior museum. For those who don’t know, the terracotta warriors were found in the 70’s by a farmer who was digging a well on his land (the same man now signs his books and charges people to take a photo of him, not that he’s an egomaniac or anything. I mean he did stumble across an ancient artefact.) The army was originally built in 210 BC to guard the tomb of Emperor Qin, and to protect him in the afterlife.

There are 3 pits at the museum and (on the advice of the Lonely Planet guide) we decided to visit them in reverse order, and I’m pretty glad we did as the biggest pit makes for an impressive high point of the visit and it would have been a bit of an anticlimax if we saw the second and first pits after seeing the first one.

Pit 3

Pit 2

Pit 1

They really are amazing and this museum is well worth a visit for anyone visiting China. Every soldier has it’s own individual expression, hairstyle and armour (sometimes dependent on their rank in the army), which is pretty impressive when you think that there are over 8,000 soldiers.

So, that has been a pretty hectic week. I’ll leave it there as we’ve got to leave soon to get our train to Beijing. Good times!

In a bit!

So we arrived in Chengdu, the first destination on our China travels itinerary, on Wednesday without too much incident. We started off from Hanshou on tuesday, took a one hour bus journey to Changde and there we caught a night train and 16 hours later we were here. We managed to find our hostel after about half an hour of searching, the directions given online were a bit misleading (read: completely wrong), and after checking into our room we booked onto the trip to the panda breeding centre for Thursday morning. While we were doing this a Chinese man (whose English name was Keith Panda, no joke) asked us if we wanted to go to a free new year party that night, he was promoting it for a new club that had just opened. We agreed to go and were told to meet him in the lobby at 10pm.

So after spending the rest of the day wandering around Chengdu, eating Subway and pizza (can’t get enough of Western food as its so readily available), we returned to the hostel to meet Keith and learned that we were the only ones in the hostel actually going to the club as other people were busy or had plans in the morning. Well we had plans in the morning too, but agreed to go anyway, our reasoning was two-fold:

1) We hadn’t been out in ages as Hanshou is devoid of nightlife, unless you include KTV (and we don’t)

and more importantly

2) It was all free!

So we got to the club and it was completely different to what clubs are like in the UK, we were allocated a table and were brought a bowl of fresh fruit, a bottle of Whiskey, numerous glasses and bottles of green and lemon tea. The Whiskey was then mixed in the jug with the two teas, was poured into another jug (don’t know why) and then served into glasses for us and throughout the night a waitress would come up and replenish anything that we finished, needless to say we got slightly inebriated and had photos with lots of random Chinese people.

The next day I was abruptly awoken by the sound of the phone ringing, it was one of the hotel staff who informed me that our bus was waiting for us. We were supposed to leave at 7.30 and it was 7.35, we had slept through both alarms that we had set and had to get ready at a rapid pace. When we got downstairs the bus took us to the panda sanctuary where it was feeding time so they were out in force, we saw loads of them munching away on their bamboo, they looked so content. We also saw quite a lot of red pandas too, which are pretty amazing, they look like a cross between a cat, a fox, a panda and a bear.

Next we went to an area where you could hold a panda, it was pretty expensive and we didn’t actually hold them (although I’m kind of glad as I would have probably broke my back), but it was a pretty surreal experience. The keepers kept putting honey on a stick for the panda and he just casually kept licking it like an ice lolly as people went and sat next to him and had about 100 pictures taken. I foolishly left my camera in our room as we left in such a hurry, but here are some of Kate’s pictures.

I realise it looks like a dwarf in a costume, but I’m pretty sure it was a real panda

Afterwards we were taken back to the hostel where we slept for a few hours, as we were knackered. Then, in the evening, we went to a hotpot restaurant that was recommended in Lonely Planet, this was quite an experience. You go into the restaurant and every table has a massive bowl in the middle that gets filled with a spicy hotpot stock and is heated, then you go into a different room and pick out skewers with various raw vegetables and meats on them and you put them in the hotpot and they cook in about 3 minutes. One of the skewers we took on the advice of another customer, it was a marinated beef skewer and we were told that it was “delicious” however  myself would describe it differently “hotter than the sun” would be one phrase that I would use. When we cooked the other skewers in the stock they were pretty spicy but when we ate these beef skewers, it felt like we were on an acid trip. I have never eaten anything so spicy in my life, we both felt completely out of sorts and agreed that we will NEVER eat it again.

The next day we spent mainly wandering. First we wandered to the people’s park which was actually really nice and quite peaceful considering how noisy and bustling Chengdu actually is, we stopped at one of the tea houses in the park, I had Oolong tea and Kate had lemon tea, a bottomless cup was 10 yuan (about £1). We declined advances of a man who wanted to clean our ears out with something resembling a medieval torture device:

Later on we wandered to an old winding street in the city (which, unfortunately, like most ancient parts of China had been refurbished) which was filled with tea houses, noodle stalls, shops and the obligatory starbucks.

That evening we did even more wandering to a night market in the Tibetan quarter of the city, which was one of the highlights of our visit to the city. I think it looks so much better at night, lots of lanterns lighting up the place and none of the gloomy smog of the daytime.

While at the market we met a lady of the Yi minority, called Ms Long Ling, she made these amazing picture cuttings out of tissue paper, she made a cutting of a cockerel and a hen in front of us, it took about 5 minutes and was bloody brilliant. We bought two of her pictures and she gave us the cockerel for free.

After wandering around the market some more, we found an indian restaurant and filled our boots. It nicely rounded off our visit to Chengdu.

Today we arrived in Emei Shan where we will go to see (what is apparently) the biggest Buddha in the world, we will climb a mountain and we will see in the new year with some beers (the local beer is called “blue sword” in this province) and a few films we nicked from the last hostel, good times!

In a bit.

So, this Christmas has been completely different to what I’m used to, and I’m going to tell you all about it….

We had quite and eventful Christmas Eve to begin with, we went into Hanshou to pay for our train tickets to Chengdu and went to the Jia jia Fu Bakery to get some custard tart things, which taste well nice, sort of similar to an egg custard but sweeter. While we were there we both had a bowl of noodles each, I had beef and Kate had Veggie, they were amazing. We will definitely be going back there.

Then later in the afternoon/evening we settled down to watch some Christmas movies (Home Alone & The Nightmare Before Christmas) to try and get into the festive spirit a bit more, as it could not have felt less like Christmas. However just when we were comfortable, we got a phone call from Ms Yuan (Our contact teacher) who told us that the headteachers from the school wanted to take us out in about five minutes time. Initially they asked us if we wanted to go to church first (didn’t even know there was a Christian church in Hanshou), however we declined, so they took us instead to a tea house.

So it was Me, Kate, Ms Yuan and about 10 other people (various teachers and headteachers) all of whom wanted to toast Merry Christmas with us, multiple times, with a half pint glass of beer that we had to down every time we toasted(Ganbei!). This went on for a few hours, we also consumed a lot of peanuts, sesame seeds and at one point a duck neck although Kate flat out refused this, I chomped it down like a twix (i.e. with lots of crunching) . By the time we left the room we had occupied was like a bomb had hit it.

So we got a lift back to the school and visited the local shop to pick up some beers for Christmas day and to have a play with the owner’s (ace woman called Gong) Kittens. Who Kate has now Christened Mork and Mindy, much to Gong’s delight.

Christmas day then started with us chilling on the couch with some more xmas movies, cups of tea and a pack of chocolate digestives that we had been saving. Then at 12:00, two of my senior students, Jack and Vivi, came to our flat where we had lots of snacks and watched more movies. They had also bought us some gifts, we got a hat each and a photo frame, which was pretty nice of them. We made some mulled wine for them to try and also made them a cup of tea each and taught them about the joy of choc digestive dunking.

After Jack and Vivi left, we were all set to begin making our Christmas dinner, we then, however, got a phone call from Ms Yuan who said that she was coming over to our flat as Me and Kate would be giving a speech, to about 7000 at a party/show they were having at the school, which they just happened to be filming for local television, erm okay. So we wrote a few sentences mainly just saying Merry Xmas, we look forward to next term, and all that. We didn’t realise the scale of the show, there were lots of dance acts and lots of screechy, wailing cat type singers, show hosts wearing polyester suits and ball gowns and then me and Kate stood there like right gormo’s in our winter coats. It was quite entertaining though a very different Christmas day experience indeed.

After some acute social embarrassment, we went back to the flat and set to work making our Christmas Dinner. It consisted of Chicken, Veggie sausages (from a packet mix), carrots, broccoli, (sort of) roast potatoes, gravy and bread sauce and it was the nicest thing I have eaten in a very long time. All of the dinner was cooked either on the hob or in our rice cooker, so it was pretty good going considering we have no oven. The majority of the meal was thanks to Kate’s parents, Pete and Sue, so thanks to them!  After eating the dinner I was so full that I felt sick, so it did feel a bit like Christmas day.

All in all it was a pretty weird Christmas experience, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Also we’ve still got our Xmas puddings and Custard to eat this evening (thanks again to Pete and Sue).

We’re beginning our 6 week adventure tomorrow so shall probably post again soon. Our first stop is Chengdu, so it’s likely to be a panda-related post.

In a bit!

So, this weekend we decided to take a mini-trip to Zhangjiajie, in Hunan province (the same province that we live in). The national park there is a UNESCO world heritage site (whatever that means) and the amazing scenery there is rumoured to have been the inspiration for the floating mountains in Avatar. This rumour is clearly perpetuated by the marketing people at the national park, as there are Avatar posters plastered all over the shop and they have actually renamed one of the peaks “Avatar Mountain”, classy eh?

So, with hopes of seeing this much lauded scenery, and of pretending that we’re actually in Avatar, (without having to get naked, paint our skin blue and stretch our ears) we set off. We left on Friday afternoon and 4 bus journeys (Hanshou-Changde, Changde-Zhangjiajie, Zhangjiajie-Wuliangyuan and Wuliangyuan-Our hostel in case you were wondering) and one Jackie Chan film later we were at our destination. It was late and we were pretty tired so after a few beers and a chat with one of the hostel staff about a potential plan for the morning, we went to bed.

The next day we got up bright and (relatively) early and set off to the National park. Upon arrival at the park, we learned that you can only buy a 2-day ticket and it was £25.00 each, now that might not seem very much but when you’re on a Chinese salary, it’s a small fortune! We grudgingly paid our 25 squid and upon entry to the park we had to present our tickets, and thumbs, to be scanned. It felt like we were entering some top-secret government facility rather than an innocuous tourist attraction.

After getting through the fort knox-esque security, we hopped on one of the free buses that would take us to the cable car. The journey on this bus was perilous to say the least, the driver going like a mentalist, at high speed, around windy mountain roads, narrowly avoiding other free buses. I would have enjoyed the high-speed bus chase more, if the driver had spent more time looking at the road, and less time gobbing out the window. Nice.  After this interesting journey (and missing the stop we were meant to take and having to get the bus back again) we arrived at the cable car station. Here we queued (bloody love queuing we do) for about 2 hours with some of the most annoying people I have ever had the displeasure of coming across.  More than on one occasion I was close to punching someone, but with the patience of a saint, I was able to rise above it (on a cable car no less, LOL).

Once we were up the mountain, we got on another free bus and some of the scenery was just amazing…

But the signage was not the best…

So we didn’t really know where we were going, we managed to find out that we could follow a path and get back down to the bottom of the mountain. What we didn’t find out was that it would take us about 4 hours of walking up and down hundreds and hundreds of steps.  I had never been so happy to see flat ground in my life. It would have been nice if we had an extra day to explore more of the park it would have been good (especially if we could have got more free buses and climbed less steps).

We may be going back for Christmas (whoop whoop), and hopefully stay in a hostel that is actually in the national park, which would be pretty cool. But we shall see, as there were a lot of steps.

Before we left, we did make sure to make our mark on the Hostel wall though, standard.

In a bit!

P.S.  Thought you would like to know as well that this mini-trip also taught me that, some how, against all odds, it is possible to have diarrhoea and constipation simultaneously. Only in China.

So, the first week of October, is celebrated as “National Holiday” in China, to ceelbrate something to do with Chairman Mao. There is more to it than this, but the most important thing about it for me, was that it meant I got a week off work, wahoo!

So me and Kate took this opportunity to have our first China adventure. Which proved to be quite eventful and actually felt longer than a week as we crammed so much into it, which was nice.

It began with a visit to Xiangtan to see our friends Dennis and Willow. The journey over there took about 4 hours from Hanshou, we travelled in a minibus and was fairly uneventful, except for the fact that it felt like the WHOLE OF CHINA were also taking the same route as us, it was a bit chaotic to say the least. However, when we came to a standstill in traffic, I was quite happy that the Chinese have forgone the sanctity of queuing (although I would eat these words a few days later in the trip), as when the traffic was at a standstill, our driver would squeeze through the tightest gaps imaginable and somehow was able to weave through the traffic without any loss of human life!

The coach station where we departed the minibus was in Xiangtan, a city that is about twice the size of Hanshou and has a population of about three million people (as opposed to Hashou’s one million) and there are a lot more westerners there so we didn’t experience as much staring, which was a nice change.

Anyway, as we got off the coach, we were greeted with the familiar sight of a pizza hut, although for some reason people were queuing up to go in there. Now I can’t fathom why somebody would queue outside a pizza hut, I can only assume that it was for one of two reasons. Either they had never been to one before so had now idea how bad it is, or they just like their food drenched in oil (actually, I think I just answered my own question, it’s definitely the latter).

However, we did not have to suffer the hut for much longer as we ate at a restaurant with our friend’s (and some of Dennis’s extended family) where the food was amazing (even more so when compared to pizza hut) and we also went for a few beverages and games of bullshit at the amazing rock bar.

The next day me and Kate (and the rest of China) went to Changsha Train station to catch our train to Guilin, which would be our next destination. We found the waiting room that we were supposed to be in and I have never seen a train station so densely populated.

Cattle Market

It reminded me of some kind of cattle pen, not least because at one end of the room there were big metal gates that were opened about 30 minutes before the departure of the train, and when these gates were opened it was like a stampede (but also because everyone seemed to be grazing, on stinky noodle pots). Luckily, myself and Kate were at the front of the queue of people when the gates opened, as otherwise we would never have reached our seats without at least losing a limb. Unfortunately, for the 9 hour journey to Guilin, we only managed to secure hard seats, it was a journey through the night, after which my bumcheeks (and sanity) would never be the same again.

 Not the best picture in the world, but you get the gist

Our carriage had seating space for 200 people and there were about the same number of people crammed between the seats and the carriages. On each row of seats there were four (very uncomfortable) bench seats. Two of them had space for two passengers each and had a table separating them, then there was the aisle, then two three seater benches facing each other, again with a tiny table in the middle. Each carriage came complete with a handful of chain smokers who gave the air a lovely acrid stench.

Our bay had the added bonus of a crazy old lady (complete with trolley/pointy bamboo pole), who decided to grace us with her presence for about 6 hours. During this time she would, quite literally, NOT STOP TALKING. She talked to me, kate, other passengers, herself, the floor, the ticket inspector, her trolley, it was like some form of torture. Also on a few occasions she almost speared us with the 4ft bamboo pole, with a sharpened end, that she deemed necessary to have with her at all times.

Other than the fact that it was a horrifically long and uncomfortable journey, a part of me feels glad that we experienced the horrible ordeal of hard seater, (although I guess it’s not so bad, as did read about one train journey that you can take in China, from Beijing to Kunming that takes a soul-destroying 47 Hours!!!) I suppose it’s character building…….I have subsequently realised that I’ve got quite enough character and will now ALWAYS travel by soft sleeper. Which we did on the way home, and it was amazing.

We spent two nights in Guilin, which is an okay city, but mainly just the next stop until going to Yangshuo. We spent our time mainly wandering around the city, eating and sleeping. With a visit to a few pagodas and a trek up a big hill thrown in for a bit of variety. Some of the food was amazing, I tried these octopus balls (easy now) that were well nice, made and cooked in front of us. And of course, we relished the opportunity to have some Western food that we had been missing, we had amazing pizza in a place called Amani (definitely go there if you ever go to Guilin) who also had free wi-fi so I filled my kindle with enough books to last me the rest of the year.

We caught the bus from Guilin to Yangshuo on the Wednesday, it took about an hour and a half to get there and it was worth all of the travelling put together. The scenery there is bloody amazing, just look at this picture!

While we were in Yangshuo we took a cruise down the Li river on a bamboo raft, which was pretty cool, and we also went on a night fishing trip. This was pretty cool as we got to see the fishermen using their trained cormorants to catch fish for them (I think this has been on a HSBC advert at one point), it was good to watch him do this but there were so many other tourists on the trip with us, it kinda spoiled it a bit. Especially as the constant camera flashes resulted in temporary blindness for me (and probably the cormorants too, they did look a bit dazed and didn’t catch many fish).

We also took part in a cooking class while in Yangshuo, it was amazing value for money, only costing 100 Yuan each (about a tenner) and I got to wield a meat cleaver for a few hours (which was fun). It started at 9:30 and went on until about 1pm. We got to choose 3 dishes each to make. I made Sweet and sour pork, Chilli and garlic Aubergine (they insisted on calling it “eggplant”) and Beer fish. All of which tasted amazing and we were given recipe cards of all of the dishes we had made so we could recreate our delicacies at home.

How effing cool do I look, in my hat and apron, cooking up a storm!?

The cooking class also included a trip to the food market first thing in the morning, which was quite an interesting experience. We started out in the fruit and vegetable section, our cooking teacher buying ingredients to use in our dishes, but then we moved into the meat section which was a shock to all of the senses. Mainly the eyes though, as the sight of dead, skinned dogs hanging on hooks was something of a new experience (see kate’s blog, My Daily Exposure, also on tumblr, if you want to see. They’re in the background of one of her pictures), there were also cages crammed full of all kinds of live animals too, rabbits, ducks, chickens, etc. It’s pretty amazing how cheap you can pick up amazing fresh ingredients from this market though. (Makes previous trips to Sainso’s or spAsda seem like a right rip-off).

We caught a train back from Guilin on Saturday night, this time on a soft sleeper, which was like heaven when compared to our previous journey. We arrived in Changsha at about 5am and then had to catch a taxi to the bus station, and then a bus back to Hanshou (taking another few hours) so we were pretty knackered by the time we got home. Luckily when we got back I found out I had Monday and Tuesday off from teaching, which was pretty good too.

The week of travelling made me really appreciate the opportunity we have got for travel, being over here and I really am looking forward to our future adventures. We were informed the other day by our contact teacher, Miss Yuan, that in the new year we have almost 2 months off from teaching, so we are going to save up and see so many places. Can’t bloody wait! (I bet you can’t either as you get to read my ridiculously long, self-indulgent ramblings again! Whoop Whoop!)

In a bit!

P.S. We’re having problems getting on Facebook, Twitter, etc at the moment (damn firewall!). However if you are so inclined, I have uploaded some more pictures of our week of travelling on my flickr page which is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/yeremes/