China: 6 Nov - 10 Dec 2009

Imagine streets teeming with people, the men noisily clear their throats and spit on the ground. The markets sell cat, dog, rat and wriggling scorpions. The toilets are squat style and often have no doors and never any toilet roll. The locals often stop in the street to stare at you... their jaw is sometimes hanging open or they ask to take your photo. The chinese children don't wear nappies; instead their trousers have holes in them so they can squat in the street whenever they need the bathroom. These are all the things that so surprised us in China but they are also what made the place challenging, a bit scary and rather exciting!

So, we are back on our blog! The absence was caused by the Communist party of China...it still insists on controlling the media as a way to oppress free speech. As a result facebook and our blog were banned and Chinese people still worship Mao (who killed a lot of people during the cultural revolution).

One thing that really stood out for us was how patriotic the Chinese are; they travel the country holding onto their chinese flag which takes a proud position in all of their photos. I was also impressed by how much farming is done; all rural land is taken over by farming... we hardly saw any gardens of trees and flowers. Food waste is also frowned upon and so every bit of an animal is used... this made restaurants difficult to navigate because we were scared of accidently ordering chicken feet, tripe, pigs brain or even pigs penis! (Although I have it on good authority that pig penis is okay tasting if a little chewy).

Beijing - Chengdu (written by Rich):

We started off in Beijing, not expecting it to be as cold as it was (6 degrees when we landed). On arrival we couldn't find anyone who spoke English at the main train station and the only map we managed to buy was too large a scale to show the small road the hostel was on. We tried using a public phone with no luck and the taxi people we found were asking 100RMB which is equivalent of 10 pounds to go down the road. It was quite daunting wandering around with heavy backpacks and a Mandarin phrase book. Sue eventually talked her way in to arrivals where the tourist information was and got enough info to find some metered taxis. We headed for the queue and happened to be right in front of an english and mandarin speaking girl who told our taxi driver where we wanted to go, saved!

We checked into a large hostel in Wangfujing (don't quote the spelling), I was already liking the place as the beer was alot cheaper than Singapore & KL (5 pounds + per pint!!). We went off exploring, had a go at the reasonably easy to use underground, it only costs 2RMB per journey anywhere which is 20p and it seems more modern than the London underground. We went to a place called the Silk Market a huge building full of very good fake clothes etc. It requires alot of bargaining but after walking away a few times you can get a very good quality fake Paul Smith/Gant/Ralph Lauren polo shirt down from 850RMB (85 pounds) to 40RMB (4 pounds). You get quite caught up in the bargaining and you can get some very good deals, Sue bought ugg boots for 15 pounds, I bought Diesel jeans for the same and plenty more!

The next day we walked round Tiananmen square which is huge what looked like 10 minutes walk on the map took us an hour to get to, on our way we saw scorpions on sticks (still wiggling) and all sorts of other awful looking food. After the square we walked round a large garden in central Beijing. It was full of people, mainly older people getting together to pass the time of day. Retirement age is 55 in China so all the retired people dance, play cards, sing karaoke, knit things to sell amongst other things it is a good atmosphere. I do have some videos of some crazy dancing to upload at some stage.

The following day we woke to snow so back to the silk market for some warmer supplies then off to a temple (Temple of Heavenly something or other), impressive buildings, good photos another few hours lost!

Up far too early to get to the great wall something before 7, it was all very disturbing, waking up, not the great wall. Here we were treated to our first experience of Chinese driving, cars are not fitted with indicators just extra loud horns so at break-neck speed and with his hand *beep* almost *beep* constantly *beeeeeeeeep* on the horn we made our way to one of the 3 restored parts of the Great Wall. The one we went to was called Mutianyu, it was less touristy than the others but still had two cable cars, people selling hot drinks on top and loads of shops and restaurants at the bottom. The wall is incredibly steep and the scenery is amazing, I'm not sure why anyone would build a wall over mountains I'd imagine anyone planning to walk an invading army through would probably take a more practical route through one of the valleys. The wall is probably 5 meters wide with battlements both sides and watch towers at regular intervals. Very little of it is flat with stairs either up or down, though we only saw a few kilometres! We walked to the end of the restored bit, straight past three no access signs and onto a well worn path of very dilapidated wall, bits had collapsed, the watch tower we reached was no longer but is felt more realistic and I like to break rules.

I am boring myself with the details now so I'll keep the rest a a bit more brief!

On our last day in Beijing we went to the Summer Palace, big buildings on a hill, lot of buddas, nice scenery etc.

We then got a sleeper train to Xian (12 hours, nice and comfortable), home of the Terra Cotta warriors, here we were in a hostel with a massive bar, we made some friends Alex, Sarah and Lindsey from the north and Luca from Slovenia one night we had a few beers and Luca got to bed at 4am before an early start to see Pandas, he had to head home soon so couldn't make it to Chengdu. The warriors were incredible built by the same emperor that built the great wall who became emperor and 14 and died in his late 30s. He not only built the wall but 7000 life-size warriors from terracotta, including archers, soldiers, generals, horses and cavalry. All of these were painted and done in great detail, this was around 200BC and according to historical documents took 720,000 people to build all to protect the tomb of the emperor.

Next another train to Chengdu where we stayed at a lovely hostel called Sims Cosy Garden Hostel we wanted to stay forever it was warm relaxed and very chilled out. From here we went to see Pandas at the Panda breeding research centre, we watched a very funny panda porn video which informed us that "Pandas like Chinese women remain in their cages for a month after giving birth". It is beyond me how Pandas ever survived when a Panda is pregnant for the first time a tiny baby Panda literally pops out (approx 100g) and the huge mother is confused so bashes is around the cage whilst is screams and the keepers attempt to rescue it! This may be due to the artificial insemination process that gets the Panda pregnant, I think mummy Panda might be a bit confused about having a baby when she has not even mated. The second birth generally goes a little better.

From Chengdu we went north by bus again at high speed until we reached snow then over some mountains with snow chains on. Destination Juizhaigou valley, a naturally beautiful valley with bright blue streams, mountains waterfalls etc. The bus took 10 hours either way with 3 toilet stops in the most filthy squat toilets ever. I won't start on chinese toilets, suffice it to say animals are cleaner than chinese people when it comes to toilets. We did the trip over 3 days, two were on the bus.

Back to Chengdu and a flight down to Li Jiang. We wandered around the old town on the first day, went cycling on very badly maintained and uncomfortable bikes yesterday. On the bikes we headed for a small village called Baishi there we wandered around saw some less modern china and had a bite to eat (I am becoming quite partial to Yak meat). On our way home we were approached by a tiny old Chinese lady who invited us for tea, this included green tea (which is mild and quite palatable, we have drunk plenty) peanuts, sunflower seeds, sweets and some fruit. The old lady showed us around her home, photos of her family, she was very cute, laughed alot, didn't speak a word of English but we managed to communicate somehow, great fun. We were planning on hiking the Tiger Leaping Gorge the next day so headed back to the hostel for Mama Naxi's family stle dinner (great chinese feast for only 1.50GBP).

Tiger Leaping Gorge:

In short: a 2 day 14 hour trek through a gorge (or canyon if you are American). It is stunning and quite steep. Rich and I took it slowly and got some beautiful photos. At the end of day 1 we relaxed at the Tea Horse Hostel (notable for its loooong menu); we got some fried rice, drank some local beer and then we discovered that the road home (which would take us back to Lijiang by bus at the end of our trek) was being dynamited so access was forbidden. Great! After a bit of research we decided the safest way home would be to turn back... and so we hiked the 28bends (steepest bit of the entire hike)twice! Luckily Rich has a dodgy knee so it was a good excuse to get a horse part of the way home. Overall the hike was good fun; we enjoyed the exercise and we met some good people... including Pete and Kate from Coventry & Newcastle who we spent the next week with. We returned to Lijiang and were so pleased to have had some of the family dinner saved for us... we ate some food and headed off to bed to rest our weary bodies. The next day we planned to head to Dali.

Dali

Dali is a great little town; we planned to stay for one night but ended up staying for three because the beds were so comfortable. It is surrounded by mountains and it has a beautiful lake within walking distance. We used the time to catch up on some rest and wander the cobbled streets of the Old Town. Rich also braved the local hairdresser... he emerged with only a few bald patches - so not such a bad result! After Dali we boarded a bus to Guilin.

Guilin / Yangshuo

Guilin, and especially Yangshuo, are famous in China for their spectacular scenery. In Guilin we visited the rice terraces which was good although not as good as we had hoped because the rice had recently been harvested. We soon headed to Yangshuo... and it was gorgeous! It is a very touristy town notable for the beautiful Li River and the numerous limestone peaks. We spent 5 nights there and used the time to rent a bicycle and a scooter to get into the countryside. It was an opportunity to see farmers walking their buffalo, locals washing their clothes in the river and to attempt communication with villagers who mostly laughed at us with big toothless grins. I loved the whole experience. By this stage we were getting a bit jaded by Chinese food, and the risk of eating dog was getting higher... and therefore our visits to McDonald's became more frequent. Rich is impressed by the fact that a Big Mac tastes EXACTLY the same regardless of where you are and yet he continued to test this theory! Never have we appreciated McDs so much!

From Yangshuo we headed to Nanning to get our Vietnamese visas. We spent one night there and then rushed for the sleeper train as soon as we got our visas. I write this from Vietnam; we arrived at 5am and were immediately introduced to Hanoi's culture of bartering. We got the taxi driver down from 25US$ to 3$ and we are now just waiting to check into our Hotel.

Facebook appears to be banned here but it might be a temporary disconnection. As soon as it is up and running we will be in touch a bit more!

Sorry for the marathon blog entry; i hope you get through all of it!

Love S&R. xxxxxxxxx