..for the first time in 15 years.
After our 3 day river cruise we headed to Hangzhou, a town fairly close to Shanghai known for it's beautiful lake. Which truly was beautiful - and my favourite place so far since we left Tibet. The Lonely Plant describes the lake as being not quite real China - but a Grade A cover version. It made a welcome change from shopping mall after shopping mall! There was certainly money going about however - our hostel (right by the lake) was surrounded by Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Lambourghini...etc etc. Certainly a very 'nice' area.
We arrived at silly-o'clock (well, 6am) and as we were not yet able to check into our hostel went for an early morning stroll around the lake. The area has been lovingly designed and the sight of class after class of people practising Tai Chi in the parkland facing the lake was pretty inspiring. There were people doing exercises, going for walks and jogs - certainly nicer than any gym! The lake is surrounded with pagodas, willow trees and lilies - very much how I had pictured China. After finally checking in and having breakfast, we headed into town to a street lined with traditional stalls and shops where we wandered happily looking at chopstick shops and interesting food items. Sadly no scorpians on sticks here as kev had vowed to have one if we found them. Hangzhou really lent itself to wandering and we did a lot of it that day. We also found time for a trip on a boat on the lake, though got a little confused by the 'hop on hop off' system and missed some places we would otherwise have visited.
The next day was time to take to the hills surrounding the area for a hike. We found an AMAZING French bakery where we had coffee and pastries for breakfast, then bought some proper rolls to make our lunch. This is more impressive than it perhaps sounds as most of the bread here has something inside it or something on top and is invariably sweetened. We then bought ham, cheese and lettuce and made sandwiches. Again, more irpressive than it sounds. They were great. Anyway, the hike. Well, it turned out to be a slightly shorter hike than we had anticipated but took us a couple of hours and showed us some lovely scenery. Once we reached the end and found ourselves back at the make, we decided to hire bikes. People say you never forget how to ride one, but really, I was never that good at it in the first place! Fortunately we were able to cycle along a traffic free causeway (other than pedestrians and other bikes which scared me enough!)and I did pretty well. not quite reading for the Tour de France yet, but I never fell off. We finished the day by walking a good few kilometres to get back to our hostel. A really enjoyable day. That evening was World Cup night and, for once, a game at a semi decent time. A few beers, a win in the football and a live band afterwards was the perfect end to the day.
The third day in hangzhou was less successful as we spent a good deal of it trying to buy train tickets to Shanghai. Once we had finally accomplished this our original plan to visit a nearby village had to be changed as it was getting on a bit. And raining. I actually can't rememebr what we ended up doing for the afternoon but it can't have been much to write about!
For once we had a short journey to our next destination, Shanghai. We have been here a few days and seen a few of the sights, but sadly it has rained (heavily) almost non stop which as meant that we have taken refuge on a couple of occasions in the cinema. The big news here currently is the Expo which is BIG business - the whole city is Expo mad. We have talked to many people who have been and almost universally seemed say 'don't bother'. The idea of queueing for seperate exhibits in the rain for at least 2 hours at a time just hasn't appealled enough so we've given it a miss. I really like Shanghai, more than I expected to, although it is very much a city where money talks. The skyline along the Bund is an impressive sight, particularly at night when you can forget the grey skies and admire the neon light show on the various newer buildings on one side, then look to the otther side and see old buildings lit tastefully. Tomorrow we leave to Guangzhou before heading over to Hong Kong and Macau. Fingers crossed we'll see some sunshine, although the weather forecast doesn't look too hopeful!
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Gorging ourselves...
Just began typing this and realised the computer was translating my letters in Chinese characters . Excellent! Still, I decided to start again in the interests of making some kind of sense. We came to ground yesterday after a 3 day cruise down the Yangtze river. We had the option of a foreign tourist cruise or a local tourist cruise and opted for the latter - mostly as it was half the price. Before the cruise started we had some time to kill in Chongqin - a fairly uninspiring (not to mention grey and humid) city on the river. Still, we were able to occupy ourselves and stocked up on instant noodles for the trip whilst we were there. We are now becoming instant noodle pros, adding fresh veg, sausages and egg to the pot. Yum!
Our cabin (shared with 4 other people) was small but clean, with bukbeds and the worlds smallest bathroom. My first experience of showering (cold) over a squat toilet. To make matters worse, we had managed to leave our only remaining towel in Chonqing so had to resort to drying ourselves with clothing.
The cruise itself began at 9.00pm, and on the first evening we sat out on deck and met a group of school teachers who had just begun the holidays. I was very jealous as it turned out (as explained by the English teacher) that their trip was subsudised by their school and there were a total of around 30 members of their staff onboard. Little did I know that by the next evening day I'd be singing in front of the lot of them...
The second day (well, first full day) of the cruise was spent on deck enjoying the views and the sunshine. There were some optional tours off the boat (but really, who wants to visit another temple at 6am??) but we opted to enjoy the scenery instead. And of course my singing. I have to say it was less painful than many of the attempts we heard!
The following day however was the real scenery day, as we passed through 2 of the three main Gorges of the river, as well as taking a detour off the main boat onto a smaller one to visit the little Gorges with some spectacular scenery. We even then left he smaller vboat for an EVEN smaller boat to explore some of the narrower stretches. Really beautiful - photos will eventually follow I hope.
The next day turned out to be shorter than we expected, leaving the boat at around midday to take a bus to the 3 Gorges Dam. As this cost quite a bit to go and view we decided that a distant sighting was enough and caught a bus onto our next destination - a short stop in Wuhan (where we currently are) followed by an overnight train to Hangzou. We spend 2 days there (where I'm planning to ride a bike for the first time in about 15 years..) and then head to Shanghai
如 农网, 够哦大半夜
Our cabin (shared with 4 other people) was small but clean, with bukbeds and the worlds smallest bathroom. My first experience of showering (cold) over a squat toilet. To make matters worse, we had managed to leave our only remaining towel in Chonqing so had to resort to drying ourselves with clothing.
The cruise itself began at 9.00pm, and on the first evening we sat out on deck and met a group of school teachers who had just begun the holidays. I was very jealous as it turned out (as explained by the English teacher) that their trip was subsudised by their school and there were a total of around 30 members of their staff onboard. Little did I know that by the next evening day I'd be singing in front of the lot of them...
The second day (well, first full day) of the cruise was spent on deck enjoying the views and the sunshine. There were some optional tours off the boat (but really, who wants to visit another temple at 6am??) but we opted to enjoy the scenery instead. And of course my singing. I have to say it was less painful than many of the attempts we heard!
The following day however was the real scenery day, as we passed through 2 of the three main Gorges of the river, as well as taking a detour off the main boat onto a smaller one to visit the little Gorges with some spectacular scenery. We even then left he smaller vboat for an EVEN smaller boat to explore some of the narrower stretches. Really beautiful - photos will eventually follow I hope.
The next day turned out to be shorter than we expected, leaving the boat at around midday to take a bus to the 3 Gorges Dam. As this cost quite a bit to go and view we decided that a distant sighting was enough and caught a bus onto our next destination - a short stop in Wuhan (where we currently are) followed by an overnight train to Hangzou. We spend 2 days there (where I'm planning to ride a bike for the first time in about 15 years..) and then head to Shanghai
如 农网, 够哦大半夜
Saturday, 12 June 2010
Ex-Ian
Well, since they had to go and hold the world cup in South Africa, making the first England game at 2am here, it seems I have time to kill! So, time for an update. We're surrently in Xi'an (which we have finally managed to stop referring to as 'Ex-Ian'), after a few days in Beijing. I'm still getting used to China after India. There are many ways in which I like it better - there's certainly no contest about where I would rather live. It's clean, it's friendly, everything you could possibly want and more (scorpians on sticks anyone?) is readily available. However. I still miss many aspects of India, despite the dirt, the heat and hassle of doing anything. That said, we have seen some amazing sights here and are lookig forward to seeing many more.
We spent 5 days altogether in Beijing. First day we went straight to Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City. Certainly far from Forbidden these days. Almost as entertaining as the city itself was watching the hordes of Chinese tourists posing for photos. My favourites are the many couples who dress in 'his and hers' versions of the same outfit. One cuople took it a step further with characatures of each other on their t-shirts. Brilliant entertainment! Another thing I love about China is the range of fast food restaurants available - we went to a fast food chain and I had duck breast with plum sauce and rice. Certianly not just Macdonalds and Burger King to choose from! Next day was Olympic day, when we passed up the opportunity to buy our very own gold medlas and settled for a walk around the stadium and surrounding area, which was very impressive.
Sunday saw us making our way to the Great Wall of China - trying to avoid the crowds as much as possible and making for a slightly more out of the way section where we hiked 12km of partially renovated and partially original state wall. I have to confess here (before Kev reads this and thinks I'm skating over the facts..) that i had a slight wobble at the beginning when it hit me how the wall goes quite considerably up as well as down. Clearly I knew this... but suddenly the reality hit me! However, after half an hour I got into my stride and (with the occasional break for ice cold water) was able to appreciate the scenery and complete impressiveness of the wall. The cuople of days were spent in the back streets of Beijing and doing a little shopping, before makin gour way to Xi'an 2 days ago. Since arriving, we have visited the Muslim quarter of the city (and spent a good hour too scared to order food anywhere), the Big Goose Pagoda and today, the Terracotta Warriors. There's certainly a lot of them! We are now the proud owners of our own set of 5 (we didn't really want them, but once the guy selling them went below a pound for the set we felt we coupldn't say no...). Which brings us to tonight, with a mere 3 and a half hour till kick off. Maybe time for a coffee to keep me awake!
We spent 5 days altogether in Beijing. First day we went straight to Tiannamen Square and the Forbidden City. Certainly far from Forbidden these days. Almost as entertaining as the city itself was watching the hordes of Chinese tourists posing for photos. My favourites are the many couples who dress in 'his and hers' versions of the same outfit. One cuople took it a step further with characatures of each other on their t-shirts. Brilliant entertainment! Another thing I love about China is the range of fast food restaurants available - we went to a fast food chain and I had duck breast with plum sauce and rice. Certianly not just Macdonalds and Burger King to choose from! Next day was Olympic day, when we passed up the opportunity to buy our very own gold medlas and settled for a walk around the stadium and surrounding area, which was very impressive.
Sunday saw us making our way to the Great Wall of China - trying to avoid the crowds as much as possible and making for a slightly more out of the way section where we hiked 12km of partially renovated and partially original state wall. I have to confess here (before Kev reads this and thinks I'm skating over the facts..) that i had a slight wobble at the beginning when it hit me how the wall goes quite considerably up as well as down. Clearly I knew this... but suddenly the reality hit me! However, after half an hour I got into my stride and (with the occasional break for ice cold water) was able to appreciate the scenery and complete impressiveness of the wall. The cuople of days were spent in the back streets of Beijing and doing a little shopping, before makin gour way to Xi'an 2 days ago. Since arriving, we have visited the Muslim quarter of the city (and spent a good hour too scared to order food anywhere), the Big Goose Pagoda and today, the Terracotta Warriors. There's certainly a lot of them! We are now the proud owners of our own set of 5 (we didn't really want them, but once the guy selling them went below a pound for the set we felt we coupldn't say no...). Which brings us to tonight, with a mere 3 and a half hour till kick off. Maybe time for a coffee to keep me awake!
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
7 days in Tibet
Well, 11 days once you include the total of 92 hours train travel there and back.
The train journey to Lhasa went surprisingly fast - once you take out the 2 nights of sleeping 44 hours doesn't seem such a long time. Being used to Indian trains helped though - even the cheap sleeper class seemed like luxury! We even had fun choosing our pot noodles to take on the journey - a far cry from pot noodle at home, these have at least 3 different sachets to add to the pot, including dried vegetables which somehow manage to seem crunchy and fresh once rehydrated.
We arrived in Lhasa in the evening and once we had checked into our (again, luxurious seeming) hotel, we went for a meal for a welcome change from noodles and an even more welcome beer. Yak meat dumplings - tasty!
The next day was time to find out a LOT of details about Buddhism in Tibet. Now, having spent a year living with Buddhist monks I thought myself fairly ok with Buddhist knowledge. Not so simple. Turns out there's an awful lot more Buddhas and Gods and protectors invloved than I was used to! What was particularly fascinating was observing the absolute depth of belief amongst the Tibetan people as they made their Kora (pilgrimage) around the Jokhang temple and prayed to their chosen god, donating money as they went. I did enjoy the sight of one little girl furtively collecting all the notes she could find on her way past... As we went we pressed our guide for as much information as we could about the 'real story' of Tibet. In the afternoon we visited a monastery, where we saw monks debating (in a very angry seeming way!)
The next day saw Palace day, and we began with the Summer palace. This would have been infinitely more interesting had our temporary guide for they day (our being ill)not been in such a hurry to get us through everything - we seemed to spend most of the morning playing catch up! Even the hurrying, however, couldn't spoil the impressive sight of Potala Palace, the chief residence of the Dalai Lama, most recently the 14th Dalai Lama before he went into exile. The inside of the palace is almost as impressive as the outside, with an astonishing amount of gold making up tombs of previous Dalai Lamas. There are a fair number of steps to climb before reaching the open sections of the palace, which was a harsh reminder of the effects of altitude! Other effects to this point had included a nose bleed (my very first EVER..) and a moment on the train when I had 6 locals rushing around me trying to inject me with glucose whilst I sat shaking, as white as a sheet.
The next day was time to head towards Everest! We spent the majority of that day driving towards Base Camp, with enough stops on the way to break up the journey and make it a little more interesting. One highlight was stopping at a breathtakingly beautiful lake, surrounded by snowy mountains and being photographed on top of a yak. Photos to follow.
We slept that night in Shigatse and set off again the next morning bright and early. The views this day were spectacular and we stopped several times when we caught glimpses of Everest through the clouds. as we got nearer, hwever, the clouds seemed to miraculously clear, leaving us with a postcard perfect view of the mountain. We arrived at the tents that were to be our hotel for the night and were pleasantly surprised by the warmth provided by a yak dung stove. No time to rest though - it was time to walk to base camp. Another harsh reminder of the effects of altitude. I almost felt as if I'd climbed the thing by the time we got there!! Freezing cold, breathless but completely blown away by what nature can do.
I had a cosy nights sleep warmed by the stove and 2 duvets. Kev, unfortunately, was really feeling the effects of being at 5,200m that night with a splitting headache and sickness which lasted on and off until we came back to Shigatse. The 2 day journey back towards Lhasa felt much longer than the journey there without Everest to look forward to, but when we finally got there we treated ourselves to a huge yak steak (yak really being the theme in Tibet!) and a well earned beer. Then it was time for a 48 hour journey to Beijing, which (as I'm still behind on this) we are just about to leave!
The train journey to Lhasa went surprisingly fast - once you take out the 2 nights of sleeping 44 hours doesn't seem such a long time. Being used to Indian trains helped though - even the cheap sleeper class seemed like luxury! We even had fun choosing our pot noodles to take on the journey - a far cry from pot noodle at home, these have at least 3 different sachets to add to the pot, including dried vegetables which somehow manage to seem crunchy and fresh once rehydrated.
We arrived in Lhasa in the evening and once we had checked into our (again, luxurious seeming) hotel, we went for a meal for a welcome change from noodles and an even more welcome beer. Yak meat dumplings - tasty!
The next day was time to find out a LOT of details about Buddhism in Tibet. Now, having spent a year living with Buddhist monks I thought myself fairly ok with Buddhist knowledge. Not so simple. Turns out there's an awful lot more Buddhas and Gods and protectors invloved than I was used to! What was particularly fascinating was observing the absolute depth of belief amongst the Tibetan people as they made their Kora (pilgrimage) around the Jokhang temple and prayed to their chosen god, donating money as they went. I did enjoy the sight of one little girl furtively collecting all the notes she could find on her way past... As we went we pressed our guide for as much information as we could about the 'real story' of Tibet. In the afternoon we visited a monastery, where we saw monks debating (in a very angry seeming way!)
The next day saw Palace day, and we began with the Summer palace. This would have been infinitely more interesting had our temporary guide for they day (our being ill)not been in such a hurry to get us through everything - we seemed to spend most of the morning playing catch up! Even the hurrying, however, couldn't spoil the impressive sight of Potala Palace, the chief residence of the Dalai Lama, most recently the 14th Dalai Lama before he went into exile. The inside of the palace is almost as impressive as the outside, with an astonishing amount of gold making up tombs of previous Dalai Lamas. There are a fair number of steps to climb before reaching the open sections of the palace, which was a harsh reminder of the effects of altitude! Other effects to this point had included a nose bleed (my very first EVER..) and a moment on the train when I had 6 locals rushing around me trying to inject me with glucose whilst I sat shaking, as white as a sheet.
The next day was time to head towards Everest! We spent the majority of that day driving towards Base Camp, with enough stops on the way to break up the journey and make it a little more interesting. One highlight was stopping at a breathtakingly beautiful lake, surrounded by snowy mountains and being photographed on top of a yak. Photos to follow.
We slept that night in Shigatse and set off again the next morning bright and early. The views this day were spectacular and we stopped several times when we caught glimpses of Everest through the clouds. as we got nearer, hwever, the clouds seemed to miraculously clear, leaving us with a postcard perfect view of the mountain. We arrived at the tents that were to be our hotel for the night and were pleasantly surprised by the warmth provided by a yak dung stove. No time to rest though - it was time to walk to base camp. Another harsh reminder of the effects of altitude. I almost felt as if I'd climbed the thing by the time we got there!! Freezing cold, breathless but completely blown away by what nature can do.
I had a cosy nights sleep warmed by the stove and 2 duvets. Kev, unfortunately, was really feeling the effects of being at 5,200m that night with a splitting headache and sickness which lasted on and off until we came back to Shigatse. The 2 day journey back towards Lhasa felt much longer than the journey there without Everest to look forward to, but when we finally got there we treated ourselves to a huge yak steak (yak really being the theme in Tibet!) and a well earned beer. Then it was time for a 48 hour journey to Beijing, which (as I'm still behind on this) we are just about to leave!
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
The next adventure...
Blog entries could be few and far between whilst we're in China, as apparently the government don't want me to keep/read a blog so the site has been blocked. Hopefully there will continue to be ways around this. For now, I'm already way behind as we've not only arrived in China, but travelled to (and nearly left again) Tibet. So, I guess I'd better start at the beginning..
We arrived in Cheng Du after a sleepless night involving 2 flights and a stop inbetween. My first impression was one of complete culture shock - coming from the dirt, heat and humidity of Kolkata to a clean, modern city where I could happily wear a jumper. Not to mention the comparative luxury of the hostel we had chosen to stay at which had everything a backpacker could need and more (DVD players in reooms and free DVD rental?!) I loved India, but was definitely ready for this change! Even better, by the end of our first day we had not taken a walk around the city, we had sorted out and booked our trip to Tibet, found 3 travelling companions and were settled in the hostel bar relaxing. We were left with 3 full days to see the area in and around Cheng Du, most of which we spent with another couple we met in the hostel. First stop - Pandas. We spent a morning at the nearby panda base, where the conversation mostly revolved around how lazy the pandas were (eat, sleep, and that's about it) and how much they looked like cuddly toys. We then spent the afternoon on a bus, trying to find the people's park and missing our stop in both directions (if only we could read Mandarin) before ending up at a sport's university instead. Ooops. We decided to give up and try again another day.
The next day we visited Leshan and the world's biggest Buddha.It was big. As was the queue to see it, which took a good hour and half and involved going down lots of steps and marvelling at how bad the chinese seem to be at a queueing system. We really wanted to point out that pushing wasn't going to get anyone to the bottom any faster. Unless it was maybe a direct route down. He was. though, very impressive and well worth a visit. That evening we went for a Sichuan hotpot, a sort of Chinese version of a fondue which turned out to be a completely baffling but entertaining experience.
We had then reached our final day in Cheng Du. We finally located the poeple's park and spent a pleasant day there watching dance classe and karaoke, drinking tea in the lovely tea house whilst Kev had his ears cleaned. The man doing it appeared never to have encountered such excitingly wax filled ears before. That evening we began our epic 44 hour train ride to Lhasa.
And so to Tibet... but that will have to wait for another day! It's time for Yak steak.
We arrived in Cheng Du after a sleepless night involving 2 flights and a stop inbetween. My first impression was one of complete culture shock - coming from the dirt, heat and humidity of Kolkata to a clean, modern city where I could happily wear a jumper. Not to mention the comparative luxury of the hostel we had chosen to stay at which had everything a backpacker could need and more (DVD players in reooms and free DVD rental?!) I loved India, but was definitely ready for this change! Even better, by the end of our first day we had not taken a walk around the city, we had sorted out and booked our trip to Tibet, found 3 travelling companions and were settled in the hostel bar relaxing. We were left with 3 full days to see the area in and around Cheng Du, most of which we spent with another couple we met in the hostel. First stop - Pandas. We spent a morning at the nearby panda base, where the conversation mostly revolved around how lazy the pandas were (eat, sleep, and that's about it) and how much they looked like cuddly toys. We then spent the afternoon on a bus, trying to find the people's park and missing our stop in both directions (if only we could read Mandarin) before ending up at a sport's university instead. Ooops. We decided to give up and try again another day.
The next day we visited Leshan and the world's biggest Buddha.It was big. As was the queue to see it, which took a good hour and half and involved going down lots of steps and marvelling at how bad the chinese seem to be at a queueing system. We really wanted to point out that pushing wasn't going to get anyone to the bottom any faster. Unless it was maybe a direct route down. He was. though, very impressive and well worth a visit. That evening we went for a Sichuan hotpot, a sort of Chinese version of a fondue which turned out to be a completely baffling but entertaining experience.
We had then reached our final day in Cheng Du. We finally located the poeple's park and spent a pleasant day there watching dance classe and karaoke, drinking tea in the lovely tea house whilst Kev had his ears cleaned. The man doing it appeared never to have encountered such excitingly wax filled ears before. That evening we began our epic 44 hour train ride to Lhasa.
And so to Tibet... but that will have to wait for another day! It's time for Yak steak.
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