Wandering Scotsman

Well it’s fair to say we had an uber lazy today, enjoying the comforts of a decent room and some space to relax.

We headed for the Venetian casino last night which is the largest in the world.  It’s very similar to the one in Vegas, complete with indoor gondola rides to make you think (ahem) you’re in Venice.  We must have walked about 3km before returning to the first restaurant for an Asian buffet.

The gaming tables were a disappointment though.  I’ve been on the tables (albeit baby ones!) in Vegas and we hunted around last night for ‘beginners’ tables but there were none : the minimum bet was 200 Hong Kong Dollars for Blackjack!!  That’s £20!  It was even a pain in the neck playing the 10c slot machines as we found out it was all based on Hong Kong Dollars, and despite being 10c machines, you had to put in $20 notes for 20 games at a time.  How you can’t use Macau money I don’t know.  We did a couple of bar owners in Yangshou a favour by exchanging Chinese Yuan for Macau MOP for the value of £50 – they had been carrying it for almost a year, and now we understand how….I just hope we remember to change it in the morning!

So we left the casinos after spending the grand sum of £2 betting and we got back the equivalent of 80p.  Due to me not knowing how to work the machines I cashed it in, and we got a printed receipt to cash it in.  After all the hassles of trying to find something to play we decided we’d keep it as a souvenir instead.

We left in the torrential rain and lightning storm and got a taxi home.

We’ve hardly ventured out today.  We think our bodies realise that Phase 1 is coming to an end and they are winding down big style so we are feeling pretty exhausted. We saw what we wanted to see of Macau yesterday.  We had a room upgrade on check-in yesterday meaning we could get free nibbles, soft drinks, beer and wine between 2.30pm and 8pm and we only had one drink each yesterday and weren’t in the mood for it today really…(well I may squeeze in some wine….).

Tomorrow it’s off on the TurboJet ferry from Macau to Hong Kong Airport then a flight to Auckland via Singapore.  The ferry to Macau was so easy – we turned up 15 mins before departure, bought our ticket, cleared immigration and were on the boat in 12 minutes.

Of course as soon as flights are added in to the picture it all gets complicated : Shuttle Bus at 9.05, check-in for Ferry by 9.30 for 10.30 departure, 1hr to airport, and we don’t fly until 1330.  We’ve a few hours in Singapore so we hope to head for a swim at the airport and before we know it, we’ll be wrapping up in a baltic Auckland.

And no, we’re still not ready for it.  Every time I leave Asia it all seems strangely boring to go to an English speaking country but hey ho…..wish us all the best!  There are two things we’re looking forward to though :

Ciara being able to read the ingredients and being able to munch into delicious NZ gluten free bread, and me being able to buy some feijoa fruit and juice (after all that I bet you I don’t like it anymore).

Panorama from our hostel’s rooftop bar terrace :-)   (Excuse the quality but I’m in a rush and we’re about to head up there for our last drink!)

Well we’ve had a bloody busy week in Yangshou in China.  This was the place we picked to chill out in for a week, largely because it’s a very touristy area (which has it’s downsides as well), but there’s loads of activities to do, so we’ve been doing a load of them.  Although we stayed here to chill out a bit, it was mostly to stay in one spot for a while….one of my good friends also worked here for 18 months but unfortunately we missed her by a couple of months.

This week we’ve done stuff every day apart from today – a cooking lesson, some river drifting (superb!), cycling, bamboo rafting, climbing and swimming.  The area is surrounded by limestone karts – very like Krabi in Thailand, Vang Vieng in Laos, and Halong Bay in Vietnam.  The climbing is outstanding but we’ve only managed to have half a day of it.

We arrived here after spending one brief night in Guilin, and took the boat down the river for a few hours. This was the first (and last) tour in China we’ve been on  – including the full flag holding up front from the tour leader – very cringy…..but the boat trip was stunning.

It’s far hotter here than Beijing.  You cant move a finger without loosing about 3 litres in sweat….it’s crazy hot and humid.  So much so that we’re both getting a bit of a cold from the air con in our room.

So we had a cooking lesson where we cooked dumplings and other more tasty dishes.  I won’t say too much about this as I’m way behind on my blog…but it was great.

Cycling :

We then went cycling alongside the smaller river outside of Yangshou.  This was pretty amazing as well as the road quickly turned into a dirt track, then before we know it we were cycling through rice paddy fields in absolutely amazing scenery.  We ended up at Dragon (or Yulong) Bridge a couple of hours later and went for a swim, before negotiating for a bamboo raft to take us back down river.

River Drifting :

We spent the next morning river drifting at Longjin River Drifting.  This was superb and a great laugh.  Basically I think it’s an outflow of a local dam but it’s really narrow and when you drive up on the bus and look down you think ‘No bloody way could we go down that….’.  You sit there with 70 odd other mini inflatable rafts then you wait for the start.  Straight away you’re into a 13m drop off down a narrow chute, and you drift down with a few similar drops for 50 minutes.  I’m sure you wouldn’t be allowed to do this in the UK but it’s not that dangerous and we bought a couple of classy photos – see below.  We were so tempted to do this again – it was 50 minutes of pure fun.

Climbing :

If you have any interest in climbing and you’re here, you just have to climb around Yangshou.  Along with Krabi in Thailand it’s one of Asia’s biggest and most respected climbing areas.  Unfortunately we were here in mid summer and we were sweating like crazy, but the climbing was superb. We managed to cool down after the climbing by walking for 50m and going for a swim.  I think I felt drier in the water as I had been sweating so much (when I sat up from the rocks after watching people it looked like I wet myself!).  I wish it was cooler and we had longer here (this is a much repeated phrase this week!!).

Lightshow :

We had a bit of culture and went to a lightshow which wasn’t quite what we expected but it was amazing in it’s own way.  It was the guy who created the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics and he created some kind of musical set on the water in Yangshou, but also lit up amazingly well using the scenery.  It’s not really our thing but you have to be a bit impressed none the less.

Yangshou :

Yangshou itself is a very touristy town – as commercial as some of the South East Asia tourist hotspots, but maybe a but more peaceful in some ways.  There’s not much street food, but there are some great locals restaurants where you can get a claypot rice dish which is amazing, for two, with beer for less than £4…..but there’s also trashy pubs with pole dancers which we’ve avoided.  Our hostel has a roof terrace bar with absolutely stunning views over the river and the limestone karsts – there’s about 70,000 karts in the area!

We’ve been approached a few times by offers of volunteering or temporary English teaching staff and we’ve been getting quite disappointed about our travel deadlines to fly out of Hong Kong to hit New Zealand – we’d love to spend way longer here and I’ve often talked about if we could we’d have done conversational English classes just to get by for longer.

I’m sure there’s loads more I could write about this place but I’m way behind blogging, and I’ve not written anything in my travel notes since arriving in China as we’ve been non-stop, but it’s really felt like a holiday after Central Asia. Despite this it’s made us really appreciate the trials and difficulties of travelling there as it’s just a completely different experience.

The reality of hitting NZ is a bit too much for us though as we don’t want to leave Asia (I say this every time I have to leave Asia!!  It’s definitely one of my favourite areas which is good as it’s massive!).  We’re meeting my really good friend from Wellington at the end of the month to have my birthday on the snow slopes of NZ which will be a big culture and temperature shock.

Tomorrow (Sunday) we’re getting the sleeper bus to Hong Kong overnight.  We have 5 nights there, then 2 nights in a 5 star (but cheap) hotel in Macau for a bit of Vegas type fun, but yet in a traditional Portugese (well, now Chinese) setting.  We reluctantly didn’t book a better hotel in Hong Kong due to cash but we’ve regretted it since as relatively speaking it wasn’t too much more money.

Better sign out – it’s off to the roof top bar for our last evening of drinks in Yangshou 🙁

Fiona – this ones for you – the both of us sitting in the train reading up on things : You’ll probably recognise the books!

On our last full day in Beijing we went to the great wall and Ciara finally managed to walk along a section, a few months later than initially planned.  We reluctantly went on a tour to do this as some sections were closed and we were getting confusing information from forums, the tourist information and the tour companies on which sections were actually open, so we opted for a hostel tour from Simitai to Jinshaling.  I think the walk was a bit shorter than normal but I’ve never sweated so much in my life.  We never found it particularly hard as it only took us just over a couple of hours so I don’t think it was 10km as advertised.

Some people may find this section of walk a bit fearsome if they are scared of heights or not used to walking – there are a couple of rough sections in it, and some very steep steps that could be easy to make a simple mistake on.

The visibility was slightly better than we expected but it was still affected by the typical Chinese smoggy haze that seems to plague everywhere we’ve seen so far.

We then took the overnight train to Xi’an which was superb – air conditioned, departure at 9.36 just in time for a game of cards and some reading, then we woke up just before arriving at 8.46am.

From there we went to the hostel, had a shower and headed out to the Terracotta Warriors which was pretty amazing, and managed to pack in a free fountain, light and music show in town in the evening which is a must do if you are in Xi’an….it’s free which is very rare in China, and it’s good fun.  If you feel brave you can even walk through the fountains.

In our second full day in Xi’an we wandered around the Muslin Quarter which has an amazing amount of street eating, but unfortunately it all looked like it would contain gluten so we gave them a miss.

We’re off to catch the train to Guilin which is a 27hr journey and we’ve only got a bed in a 6 person cabin so it’s probably going to be a worse trip than the others.   Just after booking our train we realised the floods hit that area badly as well after seeing Video on the Guilin flooding……luckily it’s subsided now! 

I’ll update some photos once we’re settled in Yangshou.  We’re only going to crash in Guilin for the night as we’re in late, then hope to get the bamboo raft to Yangshou the following day.

We kind of knew it already but a few days in Beijing have confirmed to us that we’re not really historical buffs.  We’ve been to see the Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace in Beijing over the last couple of days and whilst they are amazing in their own way, some of that was taken away by the fact that you couldn’t really get many decent big scale pictures as there is just way too much smog around the city just now. I’m not sure if it’s like this most of the year but I’m guessing (and hoping!) it’s particularly bad in the summer.

Our best times in the city was when we were wandering around the markets such as the Silk Market, late night food market and places like that.  The Silk Market however was a bit of a disappointment as the sellers were starting at some crazy prices – I wanted to buy a set of ‘Bee’ playing cards and the guy starting his negotiating at the equivalent of £25!!!  That’s about ten times the price in the UK, so I started bidding at around £5 and he wasn’t having any of it so we just walked away and he wasn’t very happy that we never continued negotiating.  Other sellers who were selling knock off North Face gear were equally unamused when I looked at a couple of things then said I never liked them and it wasn’t what I was looking for – if their looks could kill I wouldn’t be writing this.  I long for the happy go lucky sellers in places like Laos.

The night food market was very interesting if not a bit depressing.  It’s quite bizarre seeing some of the things available to eak (Silk worm cocoon anyone?) but a bit depressing when you see tiny seahorses ready to be fried…..now they’re amazing to see underwater, but just not to be eaten!

I looked at an ‘iPad’ just out of curiosity and had to laugh out loud when we asked to switch it on.  Of course it looked like a real iPad (apart from the crappy quality logo on the back), they started at £150 for it, and when I switched it on it was running the Android operating system – for those that don’t know, Android was started by Google, it’s open source (i.e. free or close to free for manufacturers), and it’s what runs on my Google phone.  I felt sorry for the older folk that were buying ‘iPhones’ maybe for their family members when I was picturing the disgust on some 13 year olds face when they threw it back at grandad saying ‘what’s this piece of sh!t you’ve bought me?!’.

We also found a really cool hutong (small street) north of the Forbidden City that had cool bars, and loads of cool arts and crafts shops so we bought some old tin mugs (as you do) and a leather bound notebook for a few quid….it’s thing like this I want to place an order for and sell them back home somehow!

Oh yeh – Forbidden City – lovely old buildings, Summer Palace – old building with a lake with some pedaloes on it, and you get charged to enter the really interesting buildings after you buy your entrance ticket….the boat we took to it drops you at the far end of the park as well so you have to walk for miles…and there’s no decent eating places……

I’ve had a couple of roast Peking Ducks as well – the first one I got highly ripped off in despite the price being on the menu.  It was more expensive and not much better than a frozen one from the Chinese Supermarket on Leith Walk in Edinburgh.  However tonight we went to one in the hutong round from our accommodation and it was £7.80 which I still thought was pricey……until I realised I had ordered a meal for two, and there was about 8 plates came out.  I made as big a dent in it as I could then retired with a takeaway.  The streets around the hostel are buzzing, there’s loads of cheap stalls but unfortunately most of them aren’t very gluten free friendly.  If you stumble on this blog I’d highly recommend staying in the Qianmen area, either the Qianmen, Leo or inn365 hostels are all around each other and loads of places around to eat, and a cheap small supermarket next to Leo Hostel.

I need to crash out now as we’re up very early so see a smoggy Great Wall about 120km outside of Beijing.  We’ve then got another night here, and we’re heading overnight on Thursday to get to Xi’an for a couple of nights to see the Terracotta Warriors.  Time is flying too quickly!  A bit like our money in the city!

Some more insects for you (they were moving as they hadn’t been fried yet!) and a wee street scene!

That’s us arrived in Beijing after our 31 hour sleeper train from Ulanbataar.  The journey was quite good apart from the carriage being a bit hot and stuffy.  We had an English speaking Mongolian guy in our carriage so it was very easy going, especially as he spent a lot of time in the carriage next door with his family, but we managed to have a few chats as well.

In amazing coincidence we managed to do a book swap with the first couple in the UB hostel I asked, and they had exactly the book we were both desperate to get our hands on, so I handed over a ripped up, well read copy of a Danny Wallace book and got “The Girl Who Played With Fire : Millenium II” by Steig Larsson (thanks Fiona for giving Ciara the first one!  We’re hooked!!).  We’re off to the English bookshop in Bejing to find the next one, sorry I mean we’re about to head round all the tourist sites etc etc etc.

Anyway, that’s us finally in China.  It felt a bit bizarre arriving in Beijing – the first really built up city which has all the modern stuff in it in our whole trip.  Since crossing the border it’s been built up a lot of the way, and there’s been a pollution type smog (sorry I’m sure the Chinese will call it a “heat haze”) in the air.

We’re looking forward to exploring the sites, wacky markets, eating good food, finally getting Ciara to visit the Great Wall (a few months later than initially planned as some of you will know), and maybe buying the odd thing or two (although that will involve getting another bag so we’ll probably leave it!). We’re at Qianmen Hostel for a few nights until we move on.  The shops outside the hostel even have more than just sweets, beer, vodka and biscuits which is the normal stock of your average Mongolian shop!  (a slight exaggeration!).