Good Morning Vietnam!

Thank you to everyone for my birthday messages!! I really appreciate that I am still remembered by so many people on the other side of the globe, and that of course you spend all your waking moments refreshing the blog to see if I've posted anything. Don't deny it. I had a fantastic birthday and if you care to read on I'll fill you in on some of my exploits... or at least the parts I remember!!

Hue (aka Wahaaaaay!) (aka Hawaii!)

We arrived in Hue after possibly the worst bus trip of the journey so far. It was 13 hours, no where near the longest I've done roaming around the world, on a sleeper bus, so there were beds. The problem wasn't the roads or the sharp corners or other people. The problem with this bus is that I was in a "bed" that was so small that even curled into some crazy feotal position there was no chance I was ever going to fit. The back half of the bed was raised at such an angled you just slide down if you try and lie on it. So I didn't actually sleep that night, which made it all the more fantastic to arrive in Hue. It made me terribly annoyed that I didn't stick to my original plan and buy a motorbike and drive down. Unfortunetly this wasn't to be since I can't afford it and my visa runs out at the end of the month, thus not giving us enough time to drive down. So I'm a bit disappointed about that, but I hope I can rent a motorbike in a few places and drive around.

We decided against having a sleep as we only had the day in Hue so we rented some bikes and went into the Imperial Palace enclosure. It's one of the few places in Vietnam where there are still some original bits of architecture that survived the American War. Although most of it did and still is rebuilt now. On the way there the chain came off my bike 3 times!! I got bored in the end and walked back to get a new bike. It was a bit dangerous on the roads since its a complete free for all. Plus we had to cross a huge bridge which isn't wide enough at all for the amount of traffic that runs through. It looked amazing though. Actually inside the complex we went for a really nice bike ride around the walls, although this was by accident because we missed the entrance. Still it was nice. Inside there is a huge a assembly hall and courtyard and I met an artist called Phong who showed me some of his work. I enjoy collecting art in different countries but the whole no-space-in-my-bag thing remains to be a problem.

We went for a nice lunch that was amazingly cheap and tried some of Hue's local beer. I enjoy that everywhere we go there is a local beer, love it. It was searingly hot so after another ride into the complex to see a really nice lake we went back to the hostel. Cooling down in the middle of the afternoon with some air con is always a good idea in 40 degree heat. A nice Vietnamese meal and a few drinks later we got an early night. For tomorrow we go to Hoi An and for tomorrow is my birthday!

Tomorrow

Got up early to get some free birthday breakfast and to listen to a remarkable rendition of 'Happy Birthday' performed in Vietnamese by Alice, Briony and Andy. Also I really need to learn how to specificy a black coffee with no sugar. Somehow I keep getting starved of the fantastic Vietnamese coffee by having it ruined with powdered or condensed milk or a ton of sugar! So we got the uneventful bus to Hoi An, which only took 4 hours, giving us the whole afternoon and evening to enjoy my birthday!I had a traditional Vietnamese lunch of Cao Lao and "Cauliflower" Beef with some locally brewed fresh beer that cost 4,000VND (that's 11.2p). We caught motorbike taxi's to the beach and spent a few hours resting on the beach. We tried to go in the sea but something was stinging us and it really hurt. We found out later that it was Phosphorensence (spelling?!), but we are yet to work out what that actually is.

Foolishly I agreed to go for 22 drinks in a day for my 22nd birthda. So after my 5th drink so far we started some drinking games and ordered some pizza up to our room. At about 9pm we left to find some bars and managed to get lost. Andy (mapbearer) forgot which way we left the hostle and took us in the wrong direction for 15 minutes. Eventually we found our way to the bar and had some more drinks whilst playing pool and fussball. When the bar shut we made our way by motorbike taxi to the beach bar (incidently on a beach) where we stripped off and threw our drunken selves into their swimming pool. Some more drinks on the beach and the hours seemed to drift by until suddently it started getting light (by this point I had succesfully imbibed 22 drinks!!) and we watched the sun come up. It was stunning. We taxi'd back to the hostel where we had a breakfast of noodles before passing out in bed, where we stayed until 3pm this afternoon!

I had a fantastic day and I thank everyone who reads this and who has sent me birthday messages/eCards. I'll try and get back to everyone but I'm running short of time. Oh, and GOOD MORNING VIETNAM!!!

PS. It's 5:45 in the afternoon... can I pretend I'm on England time and I'm jetlagged so that I can get away with saying it's still morning???

PSS. The spellchecker doesn't work on this and I'm too tired to proof read, sorry.

Hanoi and Halong Bay "Trip of Lies!!!"

Firstly, I think I've been writing about Hanoi in completely the wrong way. After arriving a week ago it is arguable that we have done so much and/or so little. Let me explain: Hanoi is not a city where you set day to day activities. Yeah, we saw Ho Chi Minh's embalmed corpse (which to me looked a bit more like a wax model at Taussauds!) and got terrible confused by pretentious modern art at the Ho Chi Minh museum where we learned nothing about Ho Chi Minh or Vietnam! We've also spent time walking around the Ancient City and eating all kinds of amazing foods. But really it's just being in Hanoi and seeing how chilled out and relaxed its people are, which is an incredible achievement given how fast and loud the city is. There isn't so much of a pavement as it is a parking spot for motorbikes. The locals are well trained at dodging people meandering into and across roads. It's such a fun and vibrant city and I'll be sorry to leave tonight.

On Sunday morning we left our hostel for Halong Bay. We managed to get a tour for $45 each, which gave us 2 nights out in Halong. It's a 4 hour drive to Halong City and from there we boarded our boat to head out through the karst scenery in Halong. Remember how I described Yangshuo? Probably not, but it's like that only in water. There are roughly 2,000 islands coming out of the water. Some are massive tall limestone cliff edges. Others are small outcrops barely bigger than the boat. It also includes Cat Ba Island, a massive inhabited island with amazing natural beaches and some excellent trekking. Sunday afternoon was spent drifting lazily through the islands, viewing one of the worlds most beautiful natural settings. We then got a kayak and paddled around the islands for an hour. It was great fun and surprisingly flat considering we were in the sea! We then swam around the boat for a while, diving and flipping off it. That evening the boat went to some islands further out to see and we watched as the sun went down and the moon came up. It was absolutely incredible. The moon was nearly as bright as the sun!! When the boat anchored we sat on top of the boat having some drinks with the other people on our tour.

We quickly made friends with Philip, Emily and Andy and as the conversation slipped from discussing who was from where, what they do, where they've been, etc, etc, to talking about Channel 4's 101 worst sexual accidents, it became abundantly clear we made some new friends. Also on the boat were some girls we all became annoyed with after a short period of time. Fresh out of school they'd come out traveling for a massive piss up. As Philip pointed out the next day, you often find in SE Asia that you are lumped together on tours speaking to people you wouldn't associate with at all in England. We all got quite drunk and had a great time in the middle of the night throwing ourselves off the roof of the boat into the sea. The crew got a little annoyed with this but Andy (new Andy) "politely" explained to them that this is what we have paid for and we want to enjoy ourselves. It worked, and we really did enjoy ourselves!!

The following day we got up early to get some breakfast and before long we were in Cat Ba Island. We got dropped off at a completely different hotel to what we were told when we bought the tour but it didn't matter since we got a shower got some superb food and headed out. Me and Andy (Hodgson) decided to rent kayaks and go out into the sea hoping to find the beach that the others were heading to. This turned out to be a bit of a life risk as further out to sea the waves are incredible choppy and actually really scary. Never mind the fact that my oar broke in two while I was paddling! If we had separate kayaks it might have been disastrous, but me and Andy were in the same one so we just about got out okay. It was fun though and we did find out own little beach that you can't get to from roads or paths. There were massive chunks of fossilized coral that looked really cool.

We decided to drop the kayaks and the oars (or at least one oar and a half of another) back and got a motorbike to the beach. We spent a few hours chilling out at the beach which got extremely busy by the time we left to go back and get some food. After another excellent meal we played some pool and I decided to head up to bed. We spent the next day basically traveling back. Not that this was a problem since traveling through Halong is just incredible. We got back to the hostel at about 4pm yesterday and at 6 we met up with Andy, Phil and Emily to go get some dinner. This turned out to be a mission to get pizza. We faced restaurants not having pizza, pizza being to expensive and a power cut, cutting out power for pizza!! Eventually we got some pizza and by the time we were half way through the others had to rush off as they needed to get a train.

Today we relax and tonight we head to Hue. You may be wondering what the title "Trip of Lies!!!" entails. Basically we call it trip of lies since the tour operaters lied to us about a lot of things in this tour. It was supposed to be catered but they didn't supply water, nor were we allowed to bring our own. They said we'd have fans in our room but mine and Andy's didn't work and Alice and Briony didn't have one. They said we'd be in a hotel near the beach and it turned out we were in a completely different one. Not that this really matters but we are in the process of getting some money back from the tour operator. I need to check out so bye now!!!

A Tale of Two Capital Cities

Shortly after writing my last post I jumped into a coach and 4 hours later I was in Laos' capital city Vientiane. Vientiane is a great city. In some places it was like stepping straight back into the West but you could turn a corner and find massive gold statues and an arch going into one of the cities many temples. There are many French colonial buildings and establishments; including a rich tapestry of bakeries! On our first day we went and saw the Laos equivalent to the Arc De Triomphe. As Tom would say: "nice from afar, far from nice" - though that in a very different context! The monument itself is called Patuxai but is often known as the "vertical runway" since the US gave them the money to build an airport, hence Laos still doesn't have an international airport! After that we saw another major Laos symbol that's printed on most of their currency. It's a temple called Pha That Luang and is said to hold the Buddha's breastbone according to the Khmer. We struggled a bit walking around in the heat and decided to go back to the guest house to cool down a bit.

Second day we didn't do an awful lot. We did however go to the most amazing cafe and have the most amazing bagel ever! It was fun having an explore of the city. We had some dinner along the riverfront which looked pretty cool when the sun was setting.
As soon as the sun did set we were mobbed by mosquitoes but other than that it was nice. Also in Vientiane we tried renting motorbikes, but with no space and no where to practice it didn't go as well as planned. Have to try again in Hanoi. Me and Andy also went shooting. The guns were just crappy rifles that weren't particularly powerful but it was still a cool experience. We were shooting paper targets and had two go's, five shots each. First go I got a miserable score of 8 and the second I got a mildly respectable 32.

The Laos National Museum was interesting. And very anti American, though that isn't too much of a surprise. The museum was a bit odd since it wasn't very big and had a sort of round circuit of prehistoric, ancient history, and then working the way through 14th to 20th centuries. It was nice doing it in our own time and since everything was in English we didn't need a guide. Since we haven't seen too much of Laos, and barely anything rural, it was at least decent to get a grip on some of the Laos culture and history.

The ride from Vientiane to Hanoi wasn't particularly enjoyable. It took just under 24 hours but the roads weren't as bad as everyone made them out to be. I guess since going through Eastern Europe and China on public transport we're probably just used to it. We also had 2 seats each so we could at least stretch out a bit. We arrived late afternoon and got to the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel in the ancient town.

Hanoi is literally buzzing. This is because everywhere you look there are a million and 10 mopeds and motorbikes. Crossing the road can be a bit tricky since there aren't any traffic laws here. Or if there are you wouldn't know! We went for a walk around the ancient city yesterday. Every road is a massive stall of markets, it's really cool just wandering around, getting some eats and just exploring the place. We also saw the tortoise lake (that probably isn't its name) where as far as we are aware there aren't any tortoises but there's enclosure of the remains of a massive tortoise that was apparently in that lake... though that didn't look particularly real.

That's it for now. I'm looking forward to exploring Hanoi further and seeing some of its temples and museums. Until next time!!

Luang Prabang & Vang Vieng, Lao

Before I fill you in on my current Lao adventure there are a few landmarks I wish to note:

Number of Countries Visited: 8
Number of Books Read: 9
Number of Entries Written: 16
Distance Traveled: ???
Friends Met: Many
Beds Slept In: A Lot
Time Spent Abroad: 10 Weeks

So that was less successful as I imagined before writing but you get the gist (I hope). Anywho, I'm having a fantastic time at about the halfway point to my Eastern Europe and Asia travels and am looking forward to many more exciting times in the second half. If you can be bothered to read up on my last few days in Laos then by all means. If not you may find I've blocked your IP - if only that was possible.

Laos

So after a gruelling, sweaty, spitty (still can't get over how much the Chinese HAVE to spit constantly), long, and boring "sleeper" bus ride from Kunming, we finally arrived in Luang Prabang. We had a bit of a scare getting to the border as we realised that none of us had any money and it costs US$35 (or at least that's what the Lonely Planet told us). Between us we scraped $103 and 490 Yuan, which we managed to change into dollars for a decent exchange rate in Mohan (the border). We got across the border no problems at all, leaving us with $20 dollars to spare, whew! I thank Mama Naxi, who gave us those good luck, tea smelling, necklace things!

So Luang Prabang, as hard as it is to write and say, is a very pretty town and possibly the smallest place we've stopped in on our travels, despite being the provincial capital. We arrived late in the afternoon and struggled to find a place with dorms and settled for 2 double rooms (we wouldn't be sharing a double bed on this occasion though!). The room was one of the best we'd stayed in and at just 50,000 Kip (about 3 pounds) a night we got air con, free coffee, our own shower, some gecko's, the works! We went for a traditional Lao BBQ. It's a bit of a DIY jobbie, like that hot pot in Qingdao (Christ, that seems like a LONG time ago!) where you cook the veg in the soup stuff around the outside and fry the meat on the top bit. No crazy cray fish looking things though. After eats, we got ourselves some free Lao Lao Cocktails from the bar and proceeded to drink the bar dry. It happened to be the final games of the Premier League season and I watched the last 20 minutes of the Hull, Man U game with a Geordie fan. I felt a bit sorry for him, but it was funny.

I surprisingly remember a good majority of the night. Laos has a 12pm curfew for all foreign nationals in the country so at half 11 most bars had stopped serving. Except apparently the bar at a bowling alley! So bowling we went. It was a bizarre experience and my score went something like this: 7/1, 5/2, 0/1, 0/0, 0/0, 0/0, STRIKE, 0/0, 0/0...

Other than that its pretty much a haze of taking millions of pictures with our new friends Emily, Philip, Troy, Sam... and many more I have forgotten. The next day was mostly a write off but I managed to exchange a couple of my books and have a walk around town in the mid afternoon, 40 degree heat! It was awesome as well watching the locals setting up the night market too. It's the best night market I've been to so far. I found I couldn't stop buying stuff to fill the last recesses of my bag with, thus making it even heavier. But everything was so cheap! We apparently arranged to meet some people from the night before at the Lao Bar opposite our guest house - this we'd find out tomorrow!

So onto tomorrow and an amazingly fantastic day out! We arranged to meet up with Emily and Philip and head out to the Kuang Xi waterfall. We had read in the LP that it was very impressive, and so it was. Not only that but it was also a bear rescue center and a good one too. We arrived at the perfect time. There weren't many people there (it got busy later in the afternoon) and managed to spend our time in secluded waterfall pools swinging out on monkey ropes! It was something I had on my list of "Things I simply must do when I am away traveling and would be absolutely gutted to miss", this list is in my head, honest. After our swim in the brilliantly turquoise swimming pool, that looked so amazing there were times I thought I was either still drunk or it was fake, we walked to the top of the waterfall. It was a hard climb but so definitely worth it! We met a guy called Oz who was frantically trying to find this mystery hidden pool he'd heard about near the top of the waterfall. This pool it turned out was down a very difficult climb into a huge opening where the waterfall above crashed down onto rocks from 100' above and then into a pool that looked over the rest of the level of the waterfall.

I have done some pretty cool things on my travels so far, but diving into this pool is right up there with the best of them. We spent another couple of hours at the pool with the monkey rope but by this time it was busy and full of Falang (Westerners), which sort of took the edge off of how we saw it in the morning.

We met up with the people we were supposed to meet up with previously in the Lao Bar and accidentally ended back at the bowling alley! Whoops! We got some take away beers and took everyone back to our rooms where we eventually pissed off the owners who kicked everyone out at some time early morning. The next day we awoke and had some breakfast before heading to Vang Vieng. The journey took about 6/7 hours where we drove around mountains and some stunning scenery, watching the sun go down as we circled, climbed, and dropped on Rte 13 through Laos.

Vang Vieng is described in LP as "Love it or hate it" my first impression of Vang Vieng was actually the latter. After being here a couple of days I have changed this opinion to 'Love it and hate it'. It is full of stunning girls and massive muscly guys who are all out on the piss. Constantly. I barely saw any English people in the first 2 months of traveling and now I've seen more than there are in England. All shouting and being annoying, it's the kind of atmosphere I wanted to get away from. It was like being at the Union in Reading. I especially didn't want to spend all my money on alcohol since we have a budget to get to see as much as possible and not to ruin it by being hung over all the time. That and the fact that we got drunk twice in Luang Prabang.

Yesterday however, we embarked on a day at the river Song. This involved getting huge rubber rings - or tubes as they are otherwise called - and getting a tuk tuk to a part of the river filled with loud music, bars, alcohol, swings, more bars, and some more bars. As much as I didn't want to be a part of the party life of Corfu... sorry, Vang Vieng... this was brilliant fun. The laziness of it all was something I haven't done so far and blissfully gliding down a river to be pulled into shore for a free shot and some beer was a good laugh. The last km of the trip it was starting to get dark and I decided to head on by myself to enjoy a bit of peacefulness floating down stream.

It was a fun day, but I made a conscious decision that I wouldn't be spending all my money on boozing and cruising... after all, what the hell is the point in that when you can visit remote villages, learn new ways of life, meet locals, and all the other things I have enjoyed so much more on my travels. The food in Laos is really good and although I never got bored of Chinese food, it's great to try something a bit different.

Here's to the next two months of my trip, I hope it's as enjoyable as the first two! On another note - a huge happy 3rd birthday to Grace, I hope you enjoyed your present.

Conquering Tiger Leaping Gorge

Arriving in Lejiang (the spelling continues to change every time I look it up) at about 10pm we phoned up our hostel and they came and picked us up, which was very nice of them. The place we were staying in was Mama Naxi's. We heard about it from some people in Wuhan and then again in Kunming. Mama Naxi is fucking crazy! She's so funny though. When we arrived she asked us if we were hungry and proceeded to make a ton of food, herself, which was absolutely amazing. She put us in 2 double rooms when we only paid for a dorm and organised for us to head off to Tiger Leaping Gorge in the morning, even looking after our bags for us for free.

We got up for breakfast at half 7 and left at half 8. It took roughly 2/3 hours to get there in the back of a mini bus with some ball crunching bumps. We got to Jane's Guest House, where we never could tell if Jane was a man or a woman, and were given hand drawn maps of the gorge. Setting off at half 11 was a terrible idea. We were walking possibly the hardest part of the gorge in the searing mid day heat. Hiking along the path at some points was very precarious with massive cliff edge drops, gets your heart pumping! Alice opted to get on the back of a horse for the hardest part and frankly I felt a bit envious!

This hardest part had a name as well - 'The 28 Bends' - though there were many more than 28 and I lost count pretty quickly. As we went further and further up the view has getting more and more incredible. Even more so considering the hike was so difficult it felt very rewarding. The top of the 28 bends was some 2,670 mtrs above sea level (so we technically wouldn't have been covered on our travel insurance should anything have happened) and I saw possible the most stunning view of my life! You can see the gorge right from the thundering rapids at the bottom to the snow capped peaks at the top. We were being charged 8 Yuan to take a picture but we cunningly took about 50 behind his back (not of his back though, that would be stupid).

Climbing down from there took a few more hours and by half 6 we got to the midway point, staying at The Tea Horse. Another great guest house with good food, good beds, and some great banter. Away from the lights I lay down on my back and stared at the stars for a good hour or 2. Kinda lost track of time. It looked pretty incredible though. The next morning we got up early and set off to the end point. It only took another 4/5 hours of hiking to get there and on the way we walked through some stunning waterfalls against amazing landscapes. Oh, and loads of goats!

At Tina's we stopped for lunch and walked down to the rapids. It was a LONG way further than we anticipated but definitely worth it. At the bottom you really see just how quick the water is running. Torrents of millions of gallons of water launching over massive rocks. We went and sat on a rock right at the edge. The way back up was a lot harder than we anticipated. We went up possible the hardest route. It was incredibly steep and at some points even had ladders going up cliff faces that were barely attached to said cliff. Climbing up a 20 mtr ladder with no safety or even anyone around to help if anything went wrong was a bit daunting. Eventually, after sweating out every drop of water I've had in the last 10 years, we reached the top!

On the way back we had a bit of minibus and fire trouble. Being that our minibus was on fire. We waited around near the foot of the gorge with for our rescue which came nearly an hour later. In this time we had been lobbing stones down the cliff and may have inadvertently started a rock slide... oops. Back in Lejiang and we had more great food and a good nights sleep. Today we got a bit of a chance to see Lejiang and I wish I could have spent more time there as the ancient town is very pretty. We caught the bus back to Kunming and I'm writing this now at half 12 at night waiting for my washing to be clean (thought that'll take many a many a wash).

All in all I have to say that Tiger Leaping Gorge has been the hardest but most stunning part of my travelling so far. It's going to be really hard to top this and I would recommend anyone, who is fit enough, going to China to trek the gorge (that means you Paul). I massively look forward to Laos - a 22 hour bus ride leaving tomorrow - but will really miss China. So my next post will be written in Laos. As for China, Zaijian!

Mud...? Rain...? Perfection!

After such a superb day out yesterday in Yangshuo we've decided on setting aside today to go to the caves. It was about a one hour bike ride through rice paddy's and some incredible mountainous scenery. First stop was the Big Ban Yan tree. Having never heard of a Ban Yan tree I was mildly interested. From a distance my first thought was 'That tree isn't very big... this is rubbish!!' however up close you could see it was actually pretty cool. The tree itself has roots that come up as other trees and are attached to the branches of the tree itself. No idea how it's happened (maybe Myles can enlighten us). Next stop was Moon Hill. It was given its name as the huge rock outcrop at the top of the hill is round and looks like its namesake. It was awesome from the side and to get to the top it was some 1,200 steps... we didn't count because we didn't go! We went up about half way followed by 2 women trying to sell us drinks all the way up. We stopped at a place for lunch and ended up buying a couple of beers from them just to get them to go away! We went back to the bottom, got on our bikes and went to the centre attraction of the day, the Water Cave.

The Water Cave is a huge cave, by huge I mean that it stretches up to 130mtrs high in some places. To get in though you have to practically lie down in a boat since the entrance to the cave is so small. We had a bit of fun with 'Driver' as we affectionately named him and when we had a bit of fun scaring Alice and Briony before left him for our guide to take us round. The guide was rubbish. We kept stopping at places so she could tell us what a certain rock looked like. A lot of it was very much clutching straws: "Hmm, yes... I see how that could look like a monkey" we lied. Further into the cave we finally got to the mud baths. This was great fun. A huge bath of mud, ace! After swimming, floating, diving, wrestling and sliding in mud we quickly washed ourselves off and bathed in the natural hot springs. Bliss. The only downside is that Andy wasn't able to join us. Unfortunately he's come down with a stomach (shitting) problem and although we may have been able to hide it in mud baths it would have been a bit of a problem everywhere else.

Next day we went to Guilin to catch our sleeper train to Kunming. Tomorrow we head out to Lejiang where we stay the night before our trek around Tiger Leaping Gorge. Can't wait! Posting in China has now become quite difficult. Since the Chinese government aren't too liberal with the Internet I will not be able to go on Blogspot myself. Any posts I make I'll e-mail to my Dad to upload for me, until I reach Laos that is.

HK to Yangshuo

On our last day in Hong Kong, Briony's birthday, we got up early and headed for the ferry to the Lamma island. The day started cloudy but by the time we got to Lamma it was bright and sunny for us! It was great to get out of the city a bit and visit a place that's so quiet (though that could have just been because we were very lucky). Compare this place to HK and you can be utterly bewildered that it's only half an hour by boat. There are no cars allowed so everyone is on mopeds and bikes. No skyscrapers clawing their way toward the sky. And, above all, we had an entire mountain walk to ourselves!

The walk was about 2 hours, where we took a couple of stops for beaches, vantage points and photo opportunities and it was a very nice epitome of China. Mountains and beach alcoves that were stunning stretches around a huge bay... where at the end is a massive power station! If you ignore that bit where China seem to want to try and mess up a view an any way possible (at least this time there were no annoying tannoys or thousands of red, blue, green and white capped tourists). We couldn't have chosen a more perfect day though. At the end of the walk we were hearing some music and it turns out we arrive just in time for the ceremony of the Gods (or something along that title). We had an excellent table by the sea and were served possible the best seafood dinner I have ever had! Prawns in soy and chili sauce, bamboo clams, steamed fish, deep fried calamari... 'twas a dream come true!

We stayed for the rest of the ceremony and when it was done got back to Hong Kong island by ferry. We went back to the hostel and by this time it was about time we should start getting some drinks down us. It was Briony's birthday and we wanted to give her an amazing night out in HK. It turns out it was brilliant. Or so I've been told. I remember up until a point then it goes a bit hazy. We found a bar with a big walk in freezer at the back and had some vodka wearing huge fur coats and hats. We found a bar and met some Chinese locals who kept buying us Jagermeister, and so the story goes. Great night.

Hungover the next day we moped about in the park near our hostel for a while and proceeded to find some lunch and head to the bus station. Caught the sleeper bus to Yangshuo, dubbed backpackers paradise. I can't ascertain why it is called a sleeper bus though, the beds were way to small to sleep in. It is basically a coach with 3 rows of 3 tier bunk beds. I happened to be in the middle row on the top and couldn't shake the feeling all night I was going to topple. However, to keep us entertained we were hit by a massive storm. Constant lightning. Thunder so booming your ears are pounding to the noise like the worlds biggest base drum. And the rain. I got caught in it running to the toilet on a short stop and i was drenched head to toe wearing t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops where the water came up to my ankles!

Arriving in Yangshuo at 5.30am and we walked to our hostel. This town is very cool. It's not huge, though not much is coming out of Honk Kong. There are mountain outcrops wherever you look though. It's crazy. Awesome views everywhere. This afternoon/evening we have been on a 3 hour cooking course. It's our first so far and we want to do one in every country we go to. I'm hoping I can show of my culinary expertise of Asia when I eventually arrive home. Today we cooked Beer Fish (a local favourite), Gong Buo Chicken, and Vegetable Dumplings. It was fantastic, if I do say so myself! I'm really looking forward to the rest of my stay in Yangshuo, it's a fantastic town and there seems to be so much to do here. I think some people are waiting for the Internet and I'm tired so that's it for now!

Hong Kong

I am the massive metropolis that is Hong Kong city! It is bloody huge. Not just area-wise but it's so very high up. It's also rather expensive, more so than Beijing. We've been here a few days now and have been around the islands, visited the (wait for the title) worlds largest, outside, seated, bronze statue of Buddha. It was very large and we even did the wisdom path... ooooh. It was an awesome day out though, mostly due to how we got there. We went on a long cable car ride over two mountain peaks where you can also see Hong Kong airport (on its own island as well) and you are as high as the planes taking off and landing! Cable car there and cable car back wasn't too expensive and they had a sort of vegetarian food thing going on at the top. It was really really good though it did mean two Indian meals in a row for us!

Food-wise, it's a lot harder here in Hong Kong than it has been in the rest of China. You really have to look hard for some cheap eats, and even then it's not particularly cheap. It is good fun though and although we are staying in the cheap, rubbish hostel, we are enjoying ourselves. We decided to get our visas sorted out here too. We heard that some places might be tightening up so we gave the embassies a little visit. Laos said we're cool to drop in and pay on the border. However Vietnam wanted HK$500 for theirs! Oh well, it will most assuredly be worth it!

Today we got a chance to view the best vantage point of Hong Kong. You take a tram which is absolutely ridiculous. It goes up the side of the mountain at a very acute angle that makes you feel you're going up a roller coaster. At the top you go through a load of escalators to the view point which is absolutely incredible. There was a fair amount of mist but for me that only added to the awesome night time view of the city and its lights. As we have found a few times it is very easy to get lost in Hong Kong, and at times it's also easy to forget you are even in China. It is very much like you have entered a completely different country (especially what with the whole customs and border crossing nonsense you go through to get in), everyone drives on the left, and no-one ever jaywalks!

All in all Hong Kong is great fun and there's so much more I'd like to see. We are going to another island tomorrow (for Briony's birthday!!!) for seafood lunch, but it feels we have missed out a lot. However, if we stay any longer I'm afraid I'll blow my entire budget here! I'm looking forward to Yangshuo and the rice terraces there too. Oh, and it was Mothers Day in China yesterday, so happy Mothers Day... again!!

Yangtse River Cruise

All aboard the Yangtse!! The river cruise was absolutely spectacular! We were given a really cool little cabin with a massive window and a shower room. The way the shower/sink works though is for the water to go through gulleys around the bathroom... so you see what you've just washed down the sink around your feet! Other than that it made a strange noise most of the time (for which you learn to block out) the cabin was class. It was about 9 or 10 in the evening when the ferry departed so it was already dark. We paid 55 Yuan to be able to sit up on top of the ferry. We also met a Spanish guy Oscar, who kept buying all of us beer! The scenery though, truly was unbelievable.

The Little Three Gorges was a funny excursion. The ferry stopped at 12pm and we got out to go on a smaller ferry. This took us through the backs of the little gorges where a boat full of Chinese tourists crowded to the front of the boar with us listening to their tour guide go on non-stop for 45 minutes. I don't think she even took a breath! After that little tour we went into small river boats where a man shouting at us in Chinese, wearing a funny hat, started singing and getting everyone to shout what sounded like "ORGY!" whenever he stopped singing. We joined in on this and they thought it was bloody hilarious. This lasted around another hour and then we went back on the ferry's to an old town on the side of one of the mountains. It looked really nice but we had no idea what was going on. So we followed a few other people and found out that apparently we get free stones... sweet! Back on the small ferry and through the gorges again to the big ferry. The whole excursion took around 6 hours and was really good fun. We had some more drinks with Oscar and on the following day we arrived in Yichang. From Yichang we got a bus to Wuhan which is were I am now.

Wuhan is a massive place. When we got off the bus we had no idea where in the city we were or where the hostel we are staying is in relation to anything. While we were looking stranded, lost, dazed and confused, we were helped out by a woman from the bus who could speak English, she asked another girl where it is we have to go and in the end the girl offered to take us there. It was incredibly nice of her, thought we ended up going around the city twice by accident, but she got us there eventually. She didn't speak a word of English but when we got to the hostel an American who speaks excellent Chinese translated our thanks. We all went out for dinner and had some beers as well.

That night (last night) we had a few drinks and when it got to about 1am we decided it'd be a good time to start some poker. So me, Andy, Mike (the American), a German guy, a woman called Christine, and a Chinese dude, played Texas Hold'em until 4am. In this time we got through 2 games. I won game one, because of my excellent poker patience..... but I crashed out of game two.

We had a change of plans: instead of going to Shanghai and across the east coast, we're heading straight down into Hong Kong. From Hong Kong we are going to Yaoshan and Guilan before heading west. For those of you currently doing exams - good luck!!

Xi'an and Beyond

'Lo again. We arrived in Xi'an after a nice 6 hour coach journey, accompanied by some annoying American hippies. Xi'an is a lot bigger than I thought and kinda wish I had set aside more time for it. We stayed for 2 days where we managed excursions to see the Terracotta Warriors and the panda reserve. The Terracotta's were awesome to see up close. You go around 3 excavation pits, which are the different sites of which the archeologists are still digging about. I got an audio tour and it was really interesting to hear about the different types of soldiers, weapons, etc, and also the theories as to what happened at the site. Xi'an itself is quite a bustling city and therefore isn't as cheap as some of the places we've been. But the room was good and only cost a few quid and we managed to eat at street stalls and stuff so we got by spending very little.

The panda reserve was a must see for us. We probably wont get to see any other panda's since we're missing out Chengdu (Wulong Panda Reserve) and don't particularly want to go to the zoo's. It was quite expensive but not too much more than our budget allows for, and we really wanted to see the pandas. There were other animals there as well, not that I can put names to most of them. But they had some birds of prey, black bears, red panda's, some weird things that look like the animals in Star Wars... but we weren't able to cut them open and sleep inside.

We caught the sleeper train to Chongqoing last night and arrived around 10am. We met our handy helper John, who has allowed us to hang about in his hostel, shower, internet and that. He's also helped us for tickets for our next bit. The Yangste River cruise. We have 4 days on the river and seeing the little Three Gorges.

That's it for now. Keep in touch.