Chongqing, China - 14th to 17th September 2011

First of all I would like to point out that our 35 hour train ride was not as bad as it sounds as we ended up with a carriage all to ourselves which meant we could sleep in and enjoy the scenery without being constantly stared at although there where some Chinese grandparents who thought it would be fun for their grand kids to see some Westerners and they frequently wandered past our cabin but we didn't mind.

Chongqing (pronounced Chong-Ching) was a really weird place it is the hub or meeting point of the 3 main rivers in China and one of the main starting points for Yangtze river cruises which was our original plan.
After we left the station and headed off to our hostel the scale of the city became apparent, i would say it was the biggest city I have ever seen and the skyline was better than Shanghai but there was not much information on the place.
We checked into the hostel and had an early night - the next morning we realised we where back in South central China - both the heat and the humidity where back with a vengeance and not to mention that Chingqing is a rather hilly city! this did nothing to help us stay cool.
We where also back in a place that used to be part of Sechuan which meant we where back in the land of VERY spicy food, something which Leanne was very happy about. For an example of how spicy the food was I ordered some sir-fried green peppers and it was literally huge chili peppers with all of the seeds still inside!
We also found some local food stalls that sold local noodles and bread which was great.
having said that Chongqing didn't really have much more to offer except the hostel we where in had 3 tiny kittens that we fell in love with and played with everyday.
So after a few days of looking around and exploring we headed to our next destination Guilin

To see our photo's from Chongqing please click on the link below;
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/ChongqingChina14thTo17thSeptember2011#

Shanghai, China 9th Sept - 13th Sept 2011

All I can say is wow! Just thinking about being on a train going 300km per hour makes me dizzy so you can imagine how disorientated i was when i stumbled off! We reached Shanghai from Beijing in just under 5 hours (1300km!).

As with most Chinese city's Shanghai is a Chinese city. It has the typical street vendors, spitting old men, metro system and McDonald's. But..a charm very different to Beijing. I loved it immediately. We caught the metro from the railway station and headed to our accommodation. Our hostel was slightly out of the main city centre but it is very close to the metro line so we didn't mind a little travelling for the savings on accommodation.

After checking in we did what we always do in a new city, we went on the hunt for some food! Straight back on the metro we thought we would incorporate a food hunt with booking our onward travel. So we headed for the train ticket booking office just 5 stops on the metro. It was amazing to see the contrast of the rooftops in Shanghai (metro is up very high). The old derelict housing was intertwined with brand new sparkly mirrored sky scrapers. Quite a sight!

After a relatively easy ticket booking scenario (English speaking attendant...pheww!) we were lucky enough to have stumbled into an area with a massive array of choice to munch on. We opted to what looked like an upmarket Chinese noodle soup fast food chain. It was FAST FOOD indeed but far from the taste you would normally expect. I had an amazing beef style soup with melt in the mouth beef cubes and a yummy broth with lots and lots of noodles. Dave had similar with an odd sweet rice side. With our full belly's we headed back to our sleeping area and stumbled across a profiterole vendor....I'm not going into detail here as it makes me sad living with out these absolutely divine beautiful magnificent...OK enough...they were yummy!

We went for a beer in the hostel bar and met 3 Irish travellers (not Gypsy's just backpackers) ended up having a few more beers than planned!

The following day started badly but ended well. The bad start was that someone stole my leggings from the washing line at the hostel. Why? I pity the traveller that is so desperate they have to steal my primark 2quid leggings! It got better though. We went right into the city and crossed over the water at the Bund The sight across the river was pretty impressive it was just a shame about the constant smog that generally suffocates China.

We has a Japanese lunch for a change (it is quite different) and mourned for our cancelled Japan trip. But we became optimistic about India! We crossed back over to The Bund (the major hub of Shanghai) and had a little look around. We then headed to the famous fake markets. They sound just as they are however they were trying to charge real prices for fake things. A joke really. Very noisy and an annoying place to be. I think we got sick of it around half an hour into our browse and left! We visited a few parks too. Nice to see some green space in such a big city. That evening we found a great Sushi place. Normally i would only eat sushi for lunch or a snack as i find it doesn't really fill me up to much but this stuff was amazing. The guys made whatever you ordered fresh. We had a delicious mushroom concoction with all the Japanese necessity's miso soup, squid wasabi salad and some potato salad too. In fact we enjoyed it so much we went back later in the trip for lunch! Other gastronomic delights also included a great Muslim hole in the wall (street kitchen) where we got a great meal for less than a quid each. We also found a gourmet supermarket where i managed to score some Budweiser and some good bread in preparation for our 36 hour train stint right across the country to Chongching. Actually looking forward to it!

As usual my blog entry is filled with food...i should be much fatter!

Next stop Chongching....

To see our pictures from Shanghai please click on the link below;
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/ShanghaiChina9thTo13thSeptember2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCO2U9-fXhbD1Yg#

Beijing, China, 6th to 9th of September 2011

We arrived in Beijing at a reasonable hour and felt fully rested after our nice soft sleeper train with private televisions.
After leaving the station we then had to get a bus, the metro and then walk for 20 minutes to get to our hostel. Once there we went for a walk along the local 'hutong' to sample the only bit of 'real' or 'original' Beijing city life left. There where tonnes of local tea stores and restaurants serving amazing Peking Duck (the local specialty).

We decided to chill out for the day and have a look around as well as try and book our bullet train tickets to Shanghai and we where successful in all of these. Quite pleased with our selves we left to have some local food and we found a little place on a busy street that sold fresh made breads so we tried some with almonds and it was pretty great!

Once back at the hostel we looked for another hostel who we had heard did better trips to the Great Wall that where away from the crowds - we booked onto their 'lost wall' trip and went for a few beers and an early night to be ready for the next day.
When we awoke the next day the weather was amazing so we set off on our tour to the great wall - it took us over 3 hours to get to our part of the wall on a cramped mini bus!
Once we arrived at our part of the wall it was worth the drive - we where rewarded with absolutely no other people at our section of the wall and the weather and views where spectacular.

We spent the next few hours walking along the wall to parts that had not been restored - there where 6 towers to make it to on our part of the wall but we stopped after 4 of them and just enjoyed the view and the little packed lunch we had brought with us. The highlight of the trip where the signs along the wall that reminded the Chinese people not to use any part of the wall as a toilet and also that every incline on the wall felt as though it would kill us as it was so hot that day!
After our trip we had to walk back to the entrance where the mini bus was waiting for us but once up the wall we realised it was about a 10km walk back! and by the time we got back our calf muscles where involuntarily spasming from all the steps we had climbed up and down.
That night I had a call from an old school friend who was a good mate of my brother called Paul Ryding who had been living in Beijing for a few years - we met up with him and went to a quiz night at an Irish bar in the city with a lot of other ex-pats and we ended up winning and having free shots and a bottle of rhum which wasn't that nice but we had a great night and it was good to catch up with Paul.

The next day we where up bright and early and headed out to the Forbidden City, which was great and immense but slightly spoilt by the amount of noisy Chinese tourists! Next we headed to the Olympic stadium to see the birds nest before heading to a restaurant near our hostel to have Peking Duck - but not before I was ripped off by a local lady for an umbrella! - we resulted in me having a slanging match in the rain with a 60odd year old Chinese lady!
We then had some final night drinks with some people that where in our dorm in the hostel who had raced on the mongol rally.
The next morning we headed to the South Beijing Railway Station to catch the bullet train to our next destination - Shanghai!

To see our photos of Beijing please click on the link below;
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/BeijingChina6thTo9thSeptember2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCOuE_Mya3rb_fg#

Xian, China - 2nd to 5th September 2011

We treated ourselves to hard sleeper tickets for our overnight train ride from Chengdu to Xian. Hard sleeper is not as bad as it sounds its actually one off the cheaper ways to travel.

We arrived early morning and hopped onto the bus to the hostel. At 2 Yuan each we couldn't grumble. We arrived at our hostel and checked in nice and quickly. After a quick shower we headed out to grab breakfast. This was easier than we thought as across the road in a little side shop a lady was selling pickled cabbage buns. They were yummy and at 5p each breakfast was just 20p each!

The city is quite small with many shopping malls and an annoying pedestrian system which means having to walk 700m every time you want to cross the road. Usually we were at either end of this.

After a few beers in the hostel with some people we met we got an early night ready for the terracotta warriors.

The Terracotta Army ( Warriors and Horses) is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210-209 BC and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife.
The army was discovered in 1974 by some local farmers in Xian.

We decided to go to see the warriors alone and had heard that it was cheap and easy to do. Most of the tours were quite overpriced and we like a bit of a challenge so we headed for the main train station in Xian where we caught a bus for 7Yuan. An hour later we arrived (dumped on the side of the road) It was drizzling slightly but not to bad so we headed for the main entrance, following the signs. Around 1km later we arrived at the main gate only to be turned away by the guards and told to go to the main car park (where we had just come from) to buy our tickets! I was rather annoyed and being wet didn't help! So we trundled back to the front entrance and queued to get our tickets. We then started over again!

We had heard that the terracotta warriors were a bit of a tourist trap and a let down to some people. So we went with an open mind.

There were 3 sections of the warriors. 1, 2 and 3 we were told by other people to go backwards as it was a better route and it was a better buildup to the many warriors.

The first section was basically a museum and mostly in Chinese. You could rent an audio tour but for what we paid for entry (over 100Yuan) we thought asking for more was just cheeky! Plus you couldn't even hear yourself think with all the tour groups floating around. It was truly packed out! Plus the rain didn't help as i think being indoors brought more people to the attraction. Most of the artifacts in the museum and some of the warriors were actually replicas which ruined it for me!

Section 2 was work in progress. Archaeologists were slowly digging away to find more soldiers most were broken and fallen over but i think there were working on restoring them. It was quite a sight.

The third section was just jam packed with people. The 'stage' area where the warriors had been excavated was probably around the size of 3 football pitches side by side. There were all standing in perfect rows with horses and carriages. Each individual warrior has its own face. Thought to be one for each of the warriors that served for the king. Its quite weird to look at. You can see that at a distance they would have looked like a guarding army!

It was just all spoilt by to many noisy, rude, spitting Chinese people. Tours everywhere whistles being blown and just not a nice environment. I think we spent around 1 hour there and then we headed back home.

We found the street food in Xian some of the best we have ever had. Dave found a lovely fish ball stall which he gorged on and i did the same with the pork balls. We found a street stall making fresh seafood noodles (very clean with disposable chopsticks) and another noodle lady serving up veggie noodles to all the locals so we had to give it a go. One of our favorite treats was a stall where you could 'Make your own pitta' with a Chinese twist of course! There was an array of veg including broccoli much to Dave's delight! All sorts of meat, fish, breads and salad herbs. You grabbed a tray and piled up your veg, meat and salad and they cooked it for you there and then. After heating a massive pitta bread they shoved all thew cooked contents topped with salad and away you go. At 5Yuan each (50p!) we went back most days!

As with most of my posts i rabble on about food, so i have to tell you about the Muslim quarter in Xian. Its where most people are recommended to go for good eating. We headed out early in the evening and were pleasantly greeted with a massive choice of places to eat. We weren't to sure what we would end up with but generally they know how to accommodate westerners well!

We were pulled into a little place that looked quite busy by a guy that spoke a little English. We ordered some soup, noodles and i ordered some BBQ skewered meats. I think one of the soups was cow intestines so didn't go down very well with Dave! I thought it was OK. Plus we got a cheap beer! After wards we found an amazing bread stall and we had some sort of veggie stuffed bread which was a nice finish to the meal!

We met up with Dan the Aussie guy we met in Chengdu who was staying the other end of town and we also bumped into our Canadian friend Derek (who was actually in our room).

It rained most of the time but was still a great time in Xian...

Next onto Beijing...soft sleeper baby!

To see our pictures of Xi'an please click on the link below;
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/XiAnChina2ndTo5thSeptember2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCIq0zaTTwOyDEg#

Chengdu, China, 27th August to 1st September 2011

OK - so after our earlier personal triumph of managing to order our train tickets in Chinese, unfortunately our first train journey in China was a rather long, hot and uncomfortable experience! (who's thinking "that's what she said"?)
The hard seats on Chinese long distance trains do exactly what they say on the tin so to speak. Our carriage was double decker with about 30 people too many - so anytime someone stood up there was a fight to sit in the empty seat! We where told that you can actually buy a ticket for less if you do not want a seat and just wander the carriage for the duration of the trip hoping that someone does not turn up.
It wasn't just the seat that made the journey uncomfortable - we where greeted to constant silence and open mouth staring by everyone else on the carriage - plus I even had my own stalker!
A 6 year old girl decided to just stare at me for the duration of the trip, which sounds harmless enough -  BUT when you wake up at 3am and the first thing you see is this girl still staring at you - I could be forgiven for thinking I was in a children of the corn film!
I must also point out that Chinese train stations are absolutely huge! literally the size of airports and most cities have at least 3 or 4 and it can be a little worrying hoping that you have gone to the right station.
After leaving the main train 18hours later with a sore back we hit the subway/metro and headed for our accommodation "lazybones hostel".
I'm putting it down to tiredness but we walked around for 15 minutes after the metro looking for the hostel and we where starting to snap at each other because we couldn't find it - only to pick our heads up and realise we where stood right outside it! We started laughing as we headed inside.

There are a number of reasons that we headed to Chengdu and I will list them here in no particular order;
1, Giant Pandas
2, Tea Houses
3, Sichuanese food (very spicy)

Chengdu is also nothing like Kunming - it is a very modern city with 14 million or so residents and also very hot - so we where treated to 33 degrees 90% humidity and our first real introduction to Chinese smog. But this aside Chengdu is a really nice city to look around.

7am the next morning we headed off to the Giant Panda breeding facility in the hills around Chengdu. It is apparently the most successful breeding programme in the world (according to Chinese information) and we sound found out why. The place was modern and catered to all of the Pandas needs and most importantly the Pandas seemed really happy in their environment and enjoyed playing and laying around as we walked around the park.
For those who don't know the Giant Panda is classed as an "ancient species" as it has been around for over 5 million years. That said it is amazing how they have survived this long and for once it is mainly nature and not man that is against the Giant Panda! "Why?" I hear you ask - well here are a few reasons without it turning into a BBC nature documentary;
1, The Giant Panda's live in separate areas in the wild and rarely come across other Pandas let alone females who are in the mood to breed.
2, The males penis is too small in comparison to it's body size and the females vagina is too big for it's size, lowering the rates of successful pregnancies.
3, A Giant Panda gives birth to live young 1000th the size of an adult - so technically this is a premature birth.
4, probably the most poignant - the Giant Panda whether male or female are extremely lazy and would rather not waste their energy mating.

So as you can see just through evolution the Panda has it tough and adding deforestation to the problem means that the success of the breeding centre is of paramount importance. Luckily we can report good news as we saw at least 30 new born Pandas in incubators (they look more like baby rats to be honest) but they will grow into the next generation and continue the cycle so we can enjoy watching them for years to come. Also at the centre is the less famous Red Pandas which I actually like a lot and you can watch these guys go about their days in their habitat without the large crowds that gather to see the Giant Pandas.
During our visit we met some cool fellow travellers who where also staying at our hostel by the name of Dan (Australian) and Yona (Canadian) which brings me onto the next point. Dan was studying just outside of Shanghai and could speak good Chinese (although he would disagree with this) so we all went to sample some famous Sichuanese Hotpot - thanks to Dan's skills we enjoyed one of the best meals of our travels and we would highly recommend having one if you ever get to Sichuan.

At the hostel we also met two English nurses by the names of Chrissie and Vicky and instantly Leanne began enjoying talking about all the good and bad things about nursing and some delightful topics of poo and bed sores. The girls also shared Leanne's love for all things tea so we went in search of a nice tea house which was in the middle of the city park. Along the way we where treated to the sight of the largest Mao statue in China (a fact that Chengdu is fiercely proud of). Upon finding the tea house we where treated to a nice seat next to the lake and enjoyed some weird fusions of fresh tea - we noticed whilst drinking that there where a lot of people cleaning ears in the park so after striking a good deal (or so we thought) a gentleman set about cleaning each of our ears one by one and placing the contents on our shoulders and at the end of cleaning each ear he would display a clean piece of cotton to prove it was really clean - thrown in with the deal was a quick massage that none of us really wanted and by the end we felt slightly battered and bruised but it added to the experience.

We spent the next day exploring more of the city and Leanne was super excited to have here picture taken with not one but about 10 giant Miffy's which made her day.
We didn't want to make the same mistake as our previous train journey so we hit the ticket office in advance and managed to get some hard sleepers to Xi'an, we where slightly sad to leave Chengdu in the end but it was time to move on.

Our next stop is Xi'an....

To see our pictures from Chengdu then click on the link below;
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/ChengduChina28thAugustTo1stSeptember2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCMGHouP05sGZngE#

Kunming, China, 24th to 27th August 2011

Welcome to China!

After over 30 hours on a sleeper bus from Laos we arrived at our first stop, Kunming.

We crossed the Laos/Chinese border with relative ease and the Chinese soldier was surprisingly gentle with our back packs and put most things back where he had got them from which was nice. Shortly after crossing the border we stopped for dinner in a small town and we where given our first piece of Chinese hospitality as a young lady invited us to dinner and paid for it without us knowing, plus she also gave us fresh fruit for the remainder of our bus journey!

We where looking forward to our arrival in Kunming as we had read up about the place and heard it was the land of  "springtime" and also that the residents have a quality of life that is arguably the best in China! (quite a statement to make).
We got off the bus a little jaded and split a cab with our new Japanese mate who's name was "Nhow" (pronounced now) and after a shower and some breakfast we emerged refreshed and ready for the day.
After 5 minutes out on the street we realised that this part of our journey was going to require a lot more effort on our part as there where hardly any English signs and the staff in the hostel where we where staying seemed to be the only people who had a grasp of the English language.
We soon learnt that pointing to phrases in our Mandarin book was much better than trying to pronounce Chinese words and got us things a lot faster (but we will persevere with trying to speak the language).
Kunming was living up to it's name and we where treated to pleasant days full of sunshine - although it was warm there was a nice breeze and the humidity of south east Asia had vanished - which meant we could cover larger distances and see more of the city.
We visited lots of parks and discovered that they are used regularly by everyone - for practising games, exercise, karaoke, dancing and even floor calligraphy - plus are kept in immaculate condition - something which British people could take a lesson from.
We decided to go and get our train tickets in advance for our next stop Chengdu - so off we went to the ticket office and after some practice of pronunciation we managed to get our hard seat tickets for our trip to Chengdu within 5 minutes of arriving at the window. Leaving with a great sense of achievement we set off to try some local cuisine.

This proved to be extremely difficult as many restaurants and cafes do not vary from their menu options and getting things without meat in it was even more difficult!
We even walked 4km's to a highly recommended vegetarian restaurant only to be turned away by the staff because they didn't want to try and speak English even though we had our trusty Mandarin book with us!
This was the first major difference we noticed between the Chinese people and the rest of south east Asia - rather than try to help the Chinese will wave you away as they don't want to appear foolish by saying the wrong words to you - which is really frustrating at times.

At the hostel we made a friend (also Chinese) by the name of Majihua (pronounced mah-jee-kwa) who told us the food in Kunming is famous all over China and the reason a lot of Chinese people visit. He offered to take us to try this food so off we went to a local busy restaurant and after 15 minutes of trying to get a seat we where soon enjoying local specialities.
We also realised that people where constantly staring and photographing us as we walked around the city, which felt a bit weird at first.
We also stumbled across a juice bar called David's which turned out to be really awesome and cheap - but Leanne lost a pair of her sun glasses here.
I also got a haircut with the help of our trusty Mandarin book and I put my faith in Leanne to tell the guy not to mess my hair up too much.

Soon it was time to leave and we headed to the station to wait for the train to our next destination Chengdu.

To see the pictures from our visit to Kunming please click on the link below;
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/KunmingChina24thTo27thAugust2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCOz1nP3muoPi6gE#