Its been a while... I suppose I should start from where I left off. Linda and me travelled from Hong Kong to Beijing, where we did a dodgy tour to the great wall which included a diversion to a Chinese medical centre, had a walk around the back lakes, Forbidden palace and had hot pot (huo guo) by one of the hutongs (old-style streets). It was hot, humid, and very busy. Chinese people don't like to queue, the worst thing was taking the subway when everyone would try to get onto the train at once without letting anyone get off. I dreaded it. Still, the subway, food, drink and cigs were all very cheap so we were trying not to complain too much.
On our first day, we braved Beijing train station to get train tickets for Xi'an. The tickets are sold in a huge hall with lots of ticket booths, all of which had long lines (okay, so they queue up sometimes). We found the only "tourist" window (i.e. which had someone who could speak English) and managed to get some hard-seat tickets for the 12 hour trip (no sleeper berths available). When the time came to get the train, we showed up at the station 2 hours early. Passengers have to wait in this large hall for the gates to the platform to open, and the waiting room for our platform was already chocka with people, sitting, standing, sleeping on the floor like in an airport. When the gates were about to open, there was a huge rush of people trying to get through, it was absolutely crazy, and we couldn't understand why all these people, most of whom had reserved seats on the train, where fighting each other to get in. Turned out that a lot of people only had standing tickets, so we had a less than pleasant journey on a very packed train. I had an aisle seat and at one point I had one man sleeping on my shoulder and another with his head on my knee.
After that we just took buses which were fine, and a lot easier to get tickets for. Xi'an was a lot quieter than Beijing, although not especially pleasant or interesting to wander around. We visited the immortal sages temple and nearby market, which was cool, and rode a tandem around the city walls, which was probably the nicest thing we did in China. Rather than take a tour to the Terracotta warriors we found out where to get the public bus, which leaves outside the front of the train station. We got to the museum site pretty early and it was great having the place virtually to ourselves, the warriors were amazing, the scale of the place has to be seen to be believed. Its also amazing that the main pit has only been half excavated to date and they still don't know all of what's down there. We took a sleeper bus from Xi'an to Shanghai, which looked like the ones I'd used in Vietnam with the three rows of bunks.
Rather than stay in Shanghai we took a train to Suzhou, which is famous in China for its system of old canals. Its a very picturesque place to wander around, although actually quite dull. The most interesting thing I did there was to get up at 6am and go to the nearby park, where, as I hoped, there was lots of elderly Chinese people doing Tai Chi (er, I didn't hope they were elderly but you know what I mean). I had a go myself, but as I haven't had many lessons I felt a bit silly doing it in front of Chinese people who had probably been doing it their whole lives. Its quite a special thing to watch to old ladies shadow boxing under a tree.
We got a bit annoyed with the hostel we stayed at in Suzhou (Ming Han Tan), the only Chinese food on the menu was fried rice, which I usually love but this had half a litre of oil floating on the plate. Meanwhile the staff where on the next table having a huge Chinese banquet. Not that I was expecting that, its just a bit frustrating when they can obviously cook all this nice food for themselves but give the guests such shite. A similar thing happened in the next place we stayed, in Hangzhou (Tour An hostel). The problem with both places is that there was not much in the way of places to eat nearby and we were hungry when we showed up. Breakfast was out of the question too, I think we had a pot noodle for breakfast nearly everyday. Actually I started to grow to like that. The range of pot noodles you can get in the Far East is pretty impressive. I had fun trying to translate the Chinese characters on the top - soon I could tell what "flavour" I was letting myself in for - Beef, shrimp, chicken etc.
The best place we stayed was the 7 Sages hostel in Xi'an, the staff were great (staff in the other hostels were not interested in helping at all), the food was good too (breakfast and dinner), they had a guitar (sweet) and the place is set in a very cool looking old Chinese army barracks with the typical round entrances to get in to different courtyards. The only weird thing was the room - the shower and toilet were separated from the rest of the room only by glass, so it was a bit voyeuristic when one of us was on the loo.
Hangzhou was a bit boring, there is a nice big lake but unfortunately it was perpetually swamped with yellow baseball cap wearing Chinese tourists. We weren't too sad to leave, and it was actually really nice when we got back to Hong Kong. Just the general mannerisms of people and the way they behave to each other, like letting people get off the subway trains first and so on. We celebrated by getting hammered.
My original plan for China was to travel to Guillin and Yangshuo, across to Yunnan province then up to Chengdu and maybe into Tibet. There were some major difficulties with that, not only the weather (the worst floods China has had for years) but also getting into Tibet sounded like an expensive nightmare. In the end I decided to go to the airport with Linda (she had a flight booked, I did not) and try to get on her plane. It turned out that there was still some seats left so I thought, why not, and next thing I'm back in London.
So I've been bumming around Manchester for the past few weeks, helping a friend move house, trying to sell stuff online, and catching up with people. One of our friends has had a baby, another one has managed to get her ex-partner out of her house and is much happier. Linda and me went camping in Malham, Yorkshire, which has some amazing scenery but was very cold and wet. We also had a day out to Southport, which has the biggest beach I've ever seen - big as in you can't see the sea its that far away.
I think I was just tired of the travelling but I'm getting itchy again now, the options are either get a job or go off travelling again. I think I'll regret it if I don't go to India, as I don't know what my situation with regards to holidays will be like in the future, and its definitely a place I'll want to spend some time in. Considering I'm a vegetarian and a yoga nut, it seems crazy that I didn't just go there first (but then I had no idea about Asia or most other countries then). I lodged my application for an Indian visa yesterday, I think after I go there I'll be ready to stop moving for a while and get my head down.
Alright, next time I'll put some more pictures up for people who aren't on facebook!
Rob
Pint?
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