Two days in Yangshuou

Simon writes:

Below is a brief description of what we got up to on two of the seven days we've been here. The other five have been uneventful because of either laziness or bad weather. Take it from me, this place is absolutely ballachingly beautful. In fact, you don't have to take it from me, just look at the photos below (by the way, if you double click on the pics they enlarge - what with me being a dribbling idiot when it comes to computer stuff, I only just found this out).






The photos above were taken on the first day of wonderment and joy, during which we hired mountain bikes, cycled up through the rice paddies by the Yulong river, took a ride on a bamboo raft (mostly very peaceful except for the bits where they threw you over waterfallls) with the bikes on the back and then went out on the razzmatazz in the evening.

The photos below are from the second day of wonderment and joy, during which we took a bus out to a far-flung village with the aim of doing a planned hike of four hours back down the Li River. We got lost in the mountains almost immediately and ended up following the directions of local villagers over goat paths and along deserted tracks towards the only town we knew how to pronounce. After nearly six hours it became clear we were still a long way off. We were concerned, but not wetting ourselves with panic or anything. Anyway, a random bloke with a motorbike (one of the first motorised vehicles we'd seen for many an hour) took pity on us (when we offered him a couple quid, anyway) and took us the rest of the way.

The evening was spent at the light show, directed by the fella who did the opening ceremony for the Olympics - punters punting on punts on the water with lights and music and stuff. Very impressive. The pic doesn't quite do it justice I'm afraid.





This last pic I took today and I think it's quite nice.

Bye!

Yangshuo

Simon writes:

Here's some photos of Shanghai:



We're now in Yangshuou (an uneventful overnight train away), but you'll have to read through this drivel first before I get you fully up to speed: Shanghai was kinda hot and we didn't really get under its skin. I did manage to tame a gargantuan bowl of Shanghai dumplings right after we'd had a big lunch in a different restaurant (we couldn't find the dumpling place at first). We were leaving town that day so it had to be done. Other than that I ruined the mood by comparing some ancient and beautiful chinese rockeries to a garden centre in Croydon.

So we're now in Yangshuou, probably our last stop before Nam (mainly because we can't be arsed to go anywhere else). It's backpackertastic (oh God, somebody please put me out of my misery)! There's Pizza and fried breakfast and pasty people with unacceptable facial hair and pony tails everywhere. Still, the Western food has allowed me to have some lovely dumps. It seems I've been saving them up.

The scenery is supposed to be fantastic - rivers and mountains and rice paddies etc. We've hardly seen any of it because it started pissing down almost as soon as we got here. Instead we've been wandering forlornly round the tat shops refusing to buy stuff every 3 seconds.

We went on a cookery course, which was really good fun. Any of you lucky/unlucky enough to be invited to eat with us in the future will be ruthlessly experimented on. Here's Noelle modelling the egg dumplings, which were particularly good:

Here's me with a big knife:

In other news I also ate "pijieu yu", which is beer fish from the local river. Carp I think. Normally I would be appalled, but it was actually pretty good. Bye!

Train to Shanghai

Noelle writes:

After catching the bus to Changsha to see if we could get a train to Shanghai (all the sleepers were taken from Zhangjiajie) we managed to get a hard sleeper. A hard sleeper is not actually that hard you just don't get as many luxuries as you do with soft sleepers. For instance the bunks are threes rather than twos so less space, it is open plan so no doors, and the lights go out at 10pm whether you like it or not.

We were happy to take the hard sleeper but we were slightly concerned about the safety of our bags given that there were no doors. The amusing thing was that we ended up playing cards with the group in our area and the adjoining area and later found out that they were all police officers on their way to Shanghai for some communication training. Could we BE any safer?!

They taught us a great card game which basically translates to Run Faster. It should leave us in good stead for future train journeys as this game is played by all Chinese and we have seen it many times on trains but couldn't figure out the rules. Also they don't play cards just for fun. There must either be small wagers involved or something the losers have to do. In our case the losers had to do pushups. My arms are killing me!

Will report more once our laundry is done and we are able to enjoy the sights.

Zhangjiajie nature reserve

Simon writes:

This stuff actually happened before the last post so it's not exactly in the right order. But these things happen when you're travelling, people - deal with it!

Normally the pose on view in this first pic would qualify you as a full-option, card-carrying, cast iron moron. But in China everybody does it and it means: "Yay, we're having a great time. Isn't everything just, like, totally awesome lol lol?!!!" or something equally fatuous. Noelle is in fact just trying to blend in.




Clearly the scenery on offer was pretty cool, but we ended up in a Chinese tour group on this one and kept getting roped into paying for things we hadn't expected and were rubbish. The tour leader didn't speak any English, although we'd paid for an English speaker (righteous indignation all round). On top of that he was a total sheister. Still, the people on the tour were pleasant enough and the nature reserve was incredible.

Update (of sorts)

Simon writes:

We're in Changsha (for about 5 hours) at the moment after having successfully managed to negotiate sleeper tickets to Shanghai (mostly in Mandarin) in a ridiculously crowded and chaotic train station - I rule! Since the last post we've seen some clay men , zoomed up the yangtze in a hydrofoil and been to a quite incredible nature reserve with crazy rock formations. Pictures to follow (cba at present).

Below is some random blather about Chinese people that I just thought up. Read it if you can be bothered. Love and hugs - S

Things Chinese people appear to be strangely averse to: the number 4; brakes; silence; privacy; decent breakfast. Things Chinese people appear to love: foreigners; work (even if it's pointless); phlegm; wearing colour-coded baseball caps as part of billion-strong tour groups.

Beijing - Pingyao - Xi'an

Simon writes:

Right. We've got a bundle of stuff for you people to catch up on, so they'll be no fannying about with gimmics, ridiculous patter about penguins or news of our bowel movements. It's pure, unadulterated traveller boilerplate from here on in.

In Beijing, we partied with these people;

got followed around by this fella (hooray, it's Jamo Samo - woohoo!);

and looked at these things:




We then got on an overnight train to Pingyao a day later than planned. There were no sleeper compartments left so we went third class and spent the night on a small bench nestled in other peoples' armpits. All a bit ropey really. Still, this means we are now officially quadruple hard traveller types.

Pingyao is nothing short of enchanting. It's basically what much of Beijing would probably now look like if they hadn't wrecking-balled it all and built a bunch of soul-sapping skyscrapers. There are no cars in Pingyao and all the buildings look like they would have done centuries ago. There's also a city wall that you can walk all the way round. Lovely lovely lovely!





A couple of things to note: people in Pingyao are very much into their sweetcorn;

you can cycle out to an amazing temple complex and see sculptures (and sculptors!) that are over a thousand years old



Next, we got an extremely efficient and comfortable bus to Xi'an (terracotta warriors will be conquered tomorrow). Today, I've managed to copy all my photos onto cds and Noelle has taken her trousers off in the street so they could be professionally shortened (teehee!).


Xi'an has an interesting Muslim quarter as well as a full-option city wall, which we biked round on a tandem.



Bye!

S

PS A big hello to all you vegetarians out there with a picture of what we had for lunch:

Yummy!

Penguins abscond...

Simon writes:

I have grim news to report: the penguins, evidently aggrieved at being shot at (see previous post) absconded in Mongolia! We found them again in China on the Great Wall, making their way to Beijing (see pic).

They informed us (somewhat tersely I might add!) that they had decided to invade China from the North, Ghengis Khan stylie, and that they didn't require our assistance.

We left them to their own devices and got involved with Beijing. So far we've: eaten in quite literally the best Chinese restaurant in the world (the duck with pancakes was just too good to describe) and met the manager; seen some of the standard tourist sights (Forbidden City etc); been out on the rampage at night; been shopping (well, Noelle has!); been to a night market and observed people eating starfish and sheeps willy; failed to do laundry.

Pictures for your perusal:




In other news, we both love Beijing and I've had the runs. It was going to happen sooner or later I guess...

Next stop Pinyao by overnight "hard seat" (3rd class) train. It's national holiday so there's no sleepers available and it's going to be ramned. Yikes!

10 things I did in Mongolia

Simon writes:

1. Met a nomadic family in their ger and consumed milk products
2. Wrestled (almost successfully!) a diminutive but surprisingly strong Mongolian
3. Unwisely climbed solo up a mountain side and took photos from the top
4. Watched Budhist monks chanting in a spectacularly colourful temple
5. Fired arrows at the penguins from a Mongolian bow made out of cow horns
6. Missed repeatedly
7. Played two hours of basketball with a dozen 19 year-old students and virtually collapsed with exhaustion afterwards
8. Watched BBC World News in a fancy hotel room
9. Narrowly avoided being run over by Ulaanbaatar's crazy drivers
10. Fell in love with a yak. Ovbviously.

Readers may have guessed that the Baikal fishing idea fell through. Curses! I went swimming in the lake instead and it was frikkin Baltic!

Photos below of much of the above...