China

This is an abridged version of our amazing China trip from a few years back – we’ll let the photos do most of the talking.

For myself, China had a been a long time on my bucket list, which probably had a lot to do with all the martial arts movies I watched as a kid and pretty much continue to do today.

It was my first time to visit China, however, C had been before so it was great having someone with the experience of a previous trip.

Knowing how much China has changed over the past number of years, I was a little apprehensive that perhaps, the China I remembered from those old movies, had moved on to the point that it was now too modern, unrecognisable, as a result of too much progress.  Of course, that’s just the way of the world, out with the old, in with the new. Thankfully though, there was still a lot of the old to see and explore, as I soon discovered at the start of our journey in it’s bustling capital, Beijing.

First things first, Beijing is big – really big.  With a population of over 20 million, you get the idea.  So to say we were staying somewhere “central” doesn’t really put it in perspective as with a city this size there are several areas that would be considered central.  However, we were only a 15 minute walk to the Forbidden City from our hotel.

As usual, we wasted no time on arrival and hit the streets.  It didn’t take too long to realise that things were going to be a tad different.  As we walked past a couple of market stalls, all the sellers were calling out their wares, my first offering was from a lady who said in her broken English, ‘Sir, would you like toad on stick?’ I just smiled and politely declined while informing her, I had toad on stick for breakfast.

While I had heard before that the Chinese do eat everything, it was now confirmed for me that this is indeed true.  As well as ‘toad on stick’, there were scorpions, seahorses, turtles, centipedes, birds and some other animals that I won’t mention here.

There are plenty of pedestrian-only streets with dozens of places to eat, drink and shop.  Most areas would also have some form of entertainment, perhaps a band, or a few street entertainers.

For our first meal, we went to the famous Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant, which as it turned out was just a short walk from our hotel.  The restaurant is huge, it’s spread over several floors and on any given day, can do over 5,000 covers – assuming most people will go for duck, that’s a lot of duck for just one restaurant. Needless to say, it’s what we went for, half a duck each and that’s exactly what we got – the entire half duck, head, feet and all.  Thankfully, it was very tasty.

 

The big draw for pretty much every visitor to the capital is the Forbidden City, which is actually huge and it takes the best part of a day to see it.  Outside the entrance is Tiananmen Square – enough said there.

With so much to do, let’s face it, we’re here for one main reason, The Great Wall of China.  There are several dozen tour companies offering half day trips, full day trips and so on, but we wanted a little more.  After a bit of research, we found a tour that not only visits the wall, but allows you to walk it.  This was more our thing. The advantage of this tour was you have a very informative guide, it avoids the tourist areas and you get to walk between almost 30 towers, which takes a few hours to do.  It was sublime.

After a few day’s in Beijing, it was time to move on.  One element we neglected to factor in on this trip was Chinese National holidays. So everyone and anyone was trying to get somewhere to visit relatives, friends or just get away for a break.  Needless to say, transport turned out to be a bit of a headache.

Our next stop was the city of X’ian, home to the Terracotta Warriors.  Our plan was to take an overnight train, but there was nothing to be had, everything, no matter what route we looked at, was sold out, as were the buses.  So we flew, which actually worked out well saving time, not so much saving money.

The centre of Xi’an is pretty cool, there’s several temples, almost like small fortress which are really cool to visit and look impressive lit up at night.

We arranged our trip to the Terracotta Warriors museum, it was amazing.  What really surprised me, was the amount of statures.  I knew there was a few hundred, I wasn’t expecting thousands.  Our guide also informed us that they reckon there are several other areas undiscovered that probably contain more statues.

After a few day’s in X’ian, we arranged a flight to the next part of our trip, Shanghai.  Shanghai was very impressive, amazing sites, great food and a fantastic atmosphere.  Yes, it’s another city, but you can’t not be impressed by it.  Like Beijing though there’s a still a lot of the old city left to discover – although given the amount of building going on, they may be gone by the time you read this.

After Shanghai, our next stop was the town of Yangshuo.  This time we took an overnight train.  We lucked out with the train, we had a 6 sleeper cabin, but thankfully no one joined us – it would have been a tad cramped.

Yangshuo is surround by amazing mountains and specular scenery and for the most part untouched by all the building so it still has an old world charm to it.  While there, we went to a show called Liu San Jie Impression Light Show. It has a cast of over 1000 men, women and children.  It’s set over a huge lagoon but the most impressive part is how they light up the surrounding mountains with different colours as the show progresses.

We also did a short cookery course in Yangshuo .  It was very enjoyable, we learned how to make Chinese dumplings among several other dishes and it also included a trip to a local market, which sold everything and anything.  I won’t go into details, but let’s just say, it was an interesting experience.

After Yangshuo, we took an overnight sleeper bus to our next stop, Guilin.  The sleeper bus was very cramped, very uncomfortable and noisy.  If that was not bad enough, the TV screens scattered around were on all night.  Still though, it’s one of those things you sort of have to do – won’t be doing it again anytime soon.

After a sleepless night, we arrived into Guilin.  We only had two nights here to visit a few sights.  We also managed to catch a movie, which worked out well as it had Chinese subtitles, but was in English.

After Guilin, we took the short two hour bus journey, to the amazing city of Hong Kong.  For the most part, Hong Kong is still very much a completely different country.  You have to go through border control to enter from the “Chinese side”, they drive on the left, rest of China drives on the right, English is spoken everywhere and it has a huge population of expatriates living and working here.  It’s clean, modern and very friendly.

We had a great few days in Hong Kong.  We took a trip out to Stanley, which is about an hour from the city centre.  There’s dozens of places to eat and drink and amazing scenery.  There’s also Ocean Park which was great fun … got my theme park fix.

Every night at the harbour, there’s a night time light show.  The best viewing places are the many high-rise hotels that have a rooftop lounge.  You order your drink of choice, while staring out at the harbour, then all the skyscrapers put on a light show to music.  It was a tad over-sold, but worth seeing – our cocktails were excellent though.

China was an amazing trip and highly recommended – we’re already planning our return trip in the near future.

Bye for now,

C&J