Hong Kong at night (Jason playing funny buggers in the background)

The trams in Hong Kong

Yangshou - China

What an absolute nightmare to get here! But finally at 6am on the day of Ian's birthday, we found a room, dropped our bags, met for breakfast and the boys commenced with birthday beers. Here we are in Yangshou, known as a backpackers retreat, found on the Rivers of Jinbao and Lijang. Westerners Street (foreigners St.) had loads of cafes, bars, souvenirs, and places to eat. It was heaving at night, with flashing neon lights that had supposedly replaced the red lanterns. The air was full of band music, restaurants competing with each other, and painful men playing recorders. Bar 98 was a particular favorite, run by a Chinese girl (Snow) and her Australian boyfriend. He runs biking tours and she runs the place when he is away. She has great staff that she pays double compared to anywhere else, so of course they just love her. Half price cocktails, great western food and a chicken satay to die for!! The area is known for fishermen with cormorants (birds) perched on their masters bamboo boats waiting for fish. The birds have rings around their necks so that they can't swallow there catch. Yet another cause for animal rights, but interesting concept. Ian and Jason the following day drank from 11am until 1.30am. Of course Jacque and I were, plain 'angry' as they had not let us know what they were doing, or where they were, as we waited in our rooms for them, to do something for the day. So of course they were in the dog house, and the following day the girls went off on our own to calm down. We had met a English girl called Eve (who was traveling on her own, and has a business making indian marquees and spends half her time between the UK and supervising the production in India) who took us swimming in the river, we hired push bikes to get there, and she introduced us to a guesthouse 20 minutes out of town, which we ended spending 4 nights in (with the boys of course, we didn't leave them in town - as who knows what they would have got up to!). We organised a guide one day by the name of Canny, from 9.30am until dark. We had push bikes, and our first stop was the Old Tree - Banyan of a Thousand Years - 1400 years old, 7.5 km south of Yangshou, 17 m high, 7.1 m wide, spanning an area of over 1000 m sq. There were huge long snakes with their mouths taped shut, and monkey's in costumes (not very good for animal rights!) We biked along local dirt roads and through villages. We climbed through some caves and had a mud bath, visited Moon Hill (mooned shaped hole) which you had to walk up, and in the heat it was all abit much. I had this old lady fanning me most of the way. I didn't say no, as the sweat was just dripping off me. Of course I had to then pay over the price for a soft drink - which included her services. We had a leisurely bamboo raft down the river as dusk began to set in, and to finish off our day. Well the calves were sore after our days adventure! There is a Dumpling restaurant (reminiscing our dumpling experience from China) there, if anyone else loves them as much as we do. We went and stayed at the Yangshou Outside Inn just outside of town, run by a Dutch owner. We were nestled next to limestone cliffs. These ones actually are the same limestone cliffs that are in Krabi, Thailand. We enjoyed relaxing, swimming, the food, early nights. It had been really hot, and then it rained and got cooler. To get to the river to swim you had to walk through the paddy fields, where you could see buffaloes and locals with homemade fishing rods from bamboo - stunners. Jacque, Ian and I did a cooking class, and learnt the Chinese use of garlic, oyster sauce, chilli and cooking with beer. Ian went rock climbing with an English guy who was teaching English, but unfortunately had a finish early for feeling unwell. We also planned for the next leg of our journey (Sth East Asia). WE ALL GOT SICK! To varying degrees. Jacque starting it all off and being the worst. Ian just feeling a little unwell, but no losing any of his bodily fluids, then me, and Jason (who just plain thought he was not going to be touched). It took as days and days to all get over it. So what was going to be 7 days relaxing, ended up being 12 days, which in hindsight was the best place for it if we had get unwell. Hence Ian was the only one that went to Longshen Rice Terraces (3 hour bus trip one way) - as Jason had come down with being sick that morning, and us girls weren't prepared to do the long day trip without being 100%. Next was an overnight train to Shen zhen to then cross the border by foot into Hong Kong on the 26/09/04.

Long shen rice terraced fields as far as the eye could see. Not mine though, Ian had to go on his own because everyone was sick. Shame

I cut Ian's hair, so Jason shaved it off!

Walking from our guesthouse to the river for a swim, through the rice fields

Buffalo keeping cool

Yangshou - limestone peaks that run from China, through Vietnam and Laos and into Thailand

Ian showing his skill at rafting the river

Great meal. Had to choose our meal by pointing to the different ingredients

This lad practised his little English at a night market in Guiyang (where NO one spoke English)

Guiyang - China

In the town of Guiyang we were the only westerners, and absolutely no one spoke English! They looked and stared and even laughed at us. We had somehow fallen off the tourist trail, which would prove to be our most challenging experience in China. We had come to this particular city on Jacque and Jason's tours's (no of course I'm not blaming them for choosing it, we just didn't have our own itinery) to see the Huangguoshu Waterfalls which is 90kms from the town. It was hard enough trying to figure out how to take a public bus to get there, which we did actually manage, and we had a picnic lunch, and walked behind the Falls. The off putting loud Chinese music from speakers all the way to the Falls, did not blend in with the natural surroundings. There was even a long escalator (that you had to pay for) to get back up to the top - which of course we did not take. This place did though have some amazing old, large Bonsai trees. We were back in the mini bus ready to go an hour before it was due to leave, so we played International Shit Head - a card game that all of a sudden I've picked up and remembered and I am more than happy to play (unlike in Peru when Ian and his mates played it all the time, which was just abit much). One of the things I did enjoy about this city was eating in the back streets and sitting on the street having food cooked up infront of us. The phrase book was needed this night just to tell them what food we wanted, and we all ate from the hot plate. Jacque and Jason found a young 12 yr old boy and his mother having dinner at the stall next door and he had some English which his mother was encouraging him to use with the foreigners, so it was at a slow pace. I had a young girl give me a note written in Chinese, apart from the "I want you", which left us somewhat confused as to whether she fancied me, fancied one of the boys, or whether the little hairdressers she was in was actually one of the many 'red light - ladies of the night - posing as a hairdressers shop' that we had come across all throughout our China tour. We later got the note translated, and all it was, was this girl wanted a photo with us. How hard could it have been to put a camera in our faces. So many others had easily done this and wanted photos with the foreigners. This is our nightmare of getting out of the town and onto our next place: Usually we can get away with getting someone to help us with booking onward train tickets if we couldn't manage it ourselves, but this time we spent a lot of time getting nowhere. In the end Jason worked out an alternative to get to our destination, via another route. From what he had concluded from the travel book, we would have probably come to the same conclusion, he managed with his phrase book to buy train tickets to an alternative destination with the idea of then having to get a bus. As the 3 hour expected train journey drew near we were ready to get off the train - 1.44pm, and we showed our ticket to a Chinese passenger, as the destination is written in Chinese. He had a timetable and we were soon to discover that it was not 1.44pm, BUT 1.44am the following morning. Whow! A 15 hour trip on hard seats, with a sick coughing Chinese woman spitting out the window the whole way. Then onto a 4 hour bumpy sleeper bus, and then we got to Guilin which is one hour away from our destination of Yangshou, and instead on getting on a public bus we paid for a taxi, because we were all very over it, slightly grumpy and tired! 19 hrs traveling in total! Arriving at 6am.

Jason pondering a checkers match

Kunming - China

Kunming, although we didn´t know it until we arrived, is the gateway to enter Tibet. (If Ian had only known!) We were able to unexpectantly organise our Vietnamese visa´s very easierly here. This time it was my Birthday. Ian bought a couple of bottles of red wine (for the 4 of us - traveling with NZ couple, Jacque and Jason) and my request (a fantasy really) was to also have brie. We actually stumbled upon a huge french supermarket (believe it or not) and I got to have brie, a swiss cheese, french stick, feta and olives in olive oil. It was beautiful. We were supposed to also go out for dinner as this was only the nibblies. However we were all alittle drunk, so we just went down to the pub outside the hotel. I texted my bestest friend Wendy, and she rang, which was fantastic, to be able to speak with her. We went on an overpriced day trip to explore some of the temples in the western hills. One temple called Bambo Temple was really beautiful. It had 500 Buddhist arhat sculptures. The craftsmanship of each one was amazing, all life size and all having individual characteristics. They reflected the human personality and soul; their faces, stances and expressions. Some of them were even on surf boards - showing that they had a sense of humour. There wasn´t much more that we found to this city. Apart from being able to arrange our visa´s; as we were under the impression that there was only three major cities in China that we would have been able to do this. So big bonus!

Our huge 50km (sore arse) bike ride in Dali, along beautiful rice fields

Dali - China

Dali was a preplanned rest for 5 days. It was described in the guide book as a place for backpackers. This usually means very laid back and a chance to have some western food. So we were all looking forward to it. Especially since we had taken a huge journey just to get there. This consisted of an overnight train from Chengdu, and then a 10 hour locals bus ride along dirt roads, that in parts were extremely wet and muddy, along windy mountain roads, and much crazy overtaking. I wore my pressure point braclets and was very pleased not to have felt at all motion sick! The huge journey didn´t help, in the fact that it was Jacque´s Birthday. We arrived after dark, and ended up at a restaurant, without our phrase book, and having to point at the variety of food on display, for suggestions of what we may like to eat, (or for them to cook up for us). I was even going through their fridge trying to determine what meat they had. We communicated our best to have chicken, and when they started chopping up the whole chicken, feet and all, I did my best to try and get them to leave this out, as Jacque especially wouldn´t have been too keen to discovering them in her meal. The food was actually really nice! Not what Jacque had in mind though. Dali is on Lake Erhai, 1,900 m above sea level. It is a rustic walled city with cobbled streets and loads of handicrafts. We enjoyed some western food, our favourite sweet and sour pork, satay, and Indian, and numerous bottles of red wine. There was even an Irish bar where the boys played pool. Ian and I hired some bicyles and went on the biggest ride of my life, approx. 50 kms. Initially we rode through villages and in between rice fields, which was great, and even to a Butterfly park, where they apparently gather in the thousands in the spring time. By the end of it, and with the rain, I was so totally over it, with an extremely sore bum, back and hands. It was getting dark as we got back. We had planned on going up the near by mountain on the couple of cable cars, but unfortunately there was two persistent days of rain. This also forced us to relax more, read more, and the boys entertained themselves by purchasing a Chinese board game called ¨Go¨and trying to learn the rules.

The Lonely Planet said that you could have a picnic on the Buddha's big toe

And this is what I ended up with from the cupping. They lasted at least 2 weeks

I only went in for a massage!!!

Le Shan - biggest outdoor standing Buddha

Giant Pandas in Chengdu

Chengdu - China

We arrived in Chengdu for two nights, at 5.30am with no accommodation prearranged. We went straight to Sams Guesthouse and managed to get a room (which wouldn't be available until 6.40am or cleaned by 8am), so we decided to book ourselves onto a 7.30am tour to go and see the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base. It was really good. Sichuan Province is the home of the Pandas - 'celebrated creatures'. There are estimated to be 500 to 1000 left in the wild and most live in the North West. The Research Base is 10 kms from the city where they have a dozen pandas. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any baby pandas. We took another trip to Le Shan to see the big Buddha. A Giant Buddha that overlooks the Minjiang River. It claims to be the world's largest Buddha statue, standing at 71m high and is carved out of rocks. Legend has it that the swift currents created the clash of the two rivers and sunk innumerable ships. In AD713 a monk commenced building the Buddha in hope to prevent further disasters. Construction finished 90 years later and waste rocks from the carving succeeded in calming the waters. The head is 15m high, the nose 6m long, and the index finger 8m long. You can climb down the side of the Buddha. It has been cleaned, but there are pictures that show trees had been growing on it. Here the Sichuan food is spicy hot. It also has this bizarre pepper flower that makes your mouth numb, like you've had an injection - it's not that pleasant! I decided to have a Chinese massage. Well by the end of it I had had scraping, cupping, and bruises all over my shoulders and down either side of my spine that lasted for 2 weeks. At some stage you may be lucky enough to have the photo evidence posted on this site. It looks more terrible than it actually felt. Our next destination was to get ourselves to Dali. We paid less commission for our train tickets, which may have not been a good idea because when we got off the overnight train, we had to take a taxi to the bus station and then take an extremely long bumpy ride! There must have been a more direct route! It was a 10 hr bus ride to Dali. The first city on the journey wasn't for 9hrs. The roads were made of dirt, they were wet and in some parts really muddy, which tested our local bus drivers abilities (of which they boys shook his hand when he got us to our destination safely). There were windy mountain roads and over taking on corners. I used my pressure point bracelets and am happy to say I wasn't motion sick at all.