Upon being berated for my blogging abstinence, I have tried to quickly re-cap the events of the last 6 weeks or so (and this has taken me a very long time!) I will try to continue where I left off, even though that seems like a very long time ago. Apologies for the essay…
The reason for the absence of posts is due to (if you hadn’t already guessed it) the fact that China, being a communist country bans sites like Facebook, YouTube and apparently also BlogSpot. Surprisingly I managed to get back online in Hong Kong, but didn’t get around to doing a big update so this won’t get posted now until we reach Vietnam unless I find some cunning way to beat the system.
I am now currently lying on the bottom bunk of a sleeper bus destined for Yangshuo so should have plenty of time to re-live China, Hong Kong and the remainder of our days in Mongolia.
Our last few days in Ulaanbaatar were pretty fun packed. We went to the markets and haggled our socks off for several Mongolian goods, many of which involved fur and other animal by-products; went to watch some Mongolian Wrestling, which was apparently an attempt at a Guinness world record for the greatest number of wrestling matches to take place at one event or something like that;
and took a day to go horse riding which was brilliant.
We were driven out of Ulaanbaatar back into the countryside and arrived at a Ger in the middle of the sandy plains at about 10am. Within minutes of arriving we were provided with the usual bowls of hard bread balls and cheese, but also a bottle of vodka and a bowl each of Arek (fermented mares milk). The Arek wasn’t actually that bad, imagine room-temperature goats milk that’s slightly bubbly, as if a bottle of beer has been mixed with it, and slightly yeasty. Well that’s pretty much it. Saying that, however, I politely declined the offer of a second bowl. George on the other hand drank about six after he was determined to beat our Mongolian driver at a Mongolian game similar to Rock, Paper, Scissors, and kept loosing.
For reasons that I can’t recall now, George also managed to involve himself in a wrestling match with the driver (I think perhaps over $500 and his Lexus 4x4) which began as a bit of fun, but a few minutes and one misplaced elbow later the driver was spitting blood and nursing a wobbly tooth. Luckily after he had recovered a bit he saw the funny side and even went on to wrestle George another few times (I’m certain with a bit more force than before).
After we had all consumed more than enough Vodka and Arek, and those involved were tired from the wrestling, we were allowed out on the Horses. Much shorter, rougher and stockier than English horses the Mongolian steeds were feisty, and they had to be lassoed from the heard of horses before they could be saddled and ridden. The saddles were the smallest I have ever seen! The Leather was hard and basic and the reigns, girth and stirrups were made from plaited rope, or I suspect perhaps even horse hair! This proved to be the downfall for Alex whose girth snapped whilst he was riding causing the saddle to slip round the horse’s middle and throw him off. Unfortunately, he managed to get his foot caught in the stirrup and there were a frightening few moments where the horse was bucking around trying to free itself from its rider dangling dangerously under its hooves, but eventually he managed to free himself and miraculously escaped with only some mean looking scrapes and bruises.
Other than this the ride was great, and despite the fact that most of the group had never ridden a horse before and were not given any directions everyone had a really good time.
Eventually the time came to say goodbye to Mongolia and we packed up our massive amounts of belongings and set off for Beijing.
We had been given directions about which train we would need to get and where, from Leon, a very helpful Peace Corps member we had met that was staying in the same Guesthouse as us in Ulaanbaatar. We thought we had bought Hard Sleeper Train tickets which we had been told were not as luxurious as Soft Sleeper Seats, but there were both seats and beds in the cabin which would allow you to lie down when you wanted. The train was supposed to leave from Ulaanbaatar in the afternoon and arrive at the border to China the following morning. We were then given instructions to run to the ticket office to buy train tickets that would allow us to get back on the train to take us over the border to China. The reason for running being that the tickets sold out fast and it is much less hassle to cross the border on the train than by bus or car. We would then cross into China and have to get a sleeper bus that afternoon which would get us into Beijing the next morning. As is the nature of this trip, it didn’t quite go to plan.
Firstly, the day we tried to get the tickets, they were sold out so we had to get the tickets the following day. This was OK for most of us, but presented a problem for George who was supposed to be meeting his girlfriend Sarah in Beijing in two days time.
We arrived at the train station and found our seats, immediately spotting our second problem. There were 8 seats per cabin, and only 6 beds. To make matters worse there were more than 8 people in our cabin. Not wanting to make things difficult we hauled our bags onto the top luggage racks above the beds and sat down, waiting to see how things would pan out. As the night drew in the beds were unfolded. There were two beds doubling up as the seats on either side of the cabin, then above those there were another two beds that could be folded down from their stowed position. The fifth bed was under the window in the aisle of the train and could be flipped over to become two seats and a table, and the sixth bed was stowed away above this.
The Mongolian family who we were seated with seemed friendly enough and we had a few games of cards with them before the beds were bagsied. We managed to nab two between the 5 of us so decided to nap in a rotational system so that everyone had a chance to recline. It wasn’t ideal but it was civilised nevertheless and it didn’t cause any trouble. We whiled the hours away playing ‘Extreme Bullshit’, reading and in Matts case playing the guitar until the early hours of the morning. The Family we had been travelling with were getting off the train and gestured to us to take the bunks which we did gratefully. We had all just settled down in our own space when about another 8 Mongolians all suddenly shuffled into our cabin looking thoroughly disgruntled. They didn’t speak a word of English but their angry pointing and gesturing led us to believe that they somehow thought they had more rights than us over the beds and that we should get off. To make matters worse, even if we had wanted to oblige (which we didn’t) there was now nowhere to sit due to the fact that our compartment had double the number of intended occupants. The Mongolians were not happy, especially the women who began to bang on the ends of the beds with their fists and thrust their tickets into our faces. A few minutes later the conductor lady was summoned and she checked out our tickets. She didn’t seem to say much, nor did she seem to be immediately siding with the Mongolians, but she did make some half-hearted gesture towards the boys suggesting that they should get down, and then left. Immediately after that, one of the men jumped up on the bunk Matt was lying on and started to physically push him off. He refused at first, but it became apparent that they were not going to give up so eventually he gave in. One of the Mongolians who did speak a little English then tried to shout over the hubbub that the beds were numbered, and that the luggage rack above the beds (very clearly a luggage rack and not a bed, backed up by the pictorial diagram of people lying on the bottom and middle bunks and luggage on the top rack) conveniently belonged to us, and that we should get up there if we wanted to sleep. Even if we had wanted to, to keep the peace we couldn’t because the racks were full of all of our bags. The women also kept trying to tell me to get off but I was not prepared to give in at all, so every time they banged on the side of my bed and shouted something incoherently Mongolian, I returned the favour, until eventually they got the idea and gave up.
What made them think that they were more entitled to the beds than we were, I have no idea, but the carriage was certainly overbooked as the other cabins did not seem to be so heavily populated.
Eventually the drama subsided. I refused, point blank, to move and remained on my bed. Justin had managed to nab a bed in the next carriage, Alex and George squashed up on the same bunk that they were apparently ‘allowed’ to remain on and Matt cosied up next to all of the locals, even befriending the enemy who offered him vodka and cigarettes midway through the night! JP and Dave had managed to avoid this drama altogether as they had bought their tickets separately to us and had beds further down the train.
The morning came, and knowing that there was going to be a mad rush for tickets, we sent Justin and George to run to the office with the rest of the crowd whilst we remained with the bags. Unfortunately, they returned to say that the tickets were already sold out when they got there. We had been told that our second option was to get the bus across, so we all heaved our many many bags across the station in search of a bus. Before long, we found one, however, that also appeared to be full so we ended up getting two old Uazs'. Nothing going as planned so far, we whizzed towards the border. The crossing went fairly smoothly and we almost made it straight to the bus station where we would buy the sleeper bus tickets to take us to Beijing, except for our ride dropping us off at some taxi drop off point instead of the bus station that we had agreed on, leading us to get another taxi from there to the bus station.
Anyway eventually we got there, bought our tickets and some strange Chinese snacks;
And waited in a Chinese fast food restaurant with a logo looking like a Chinese version of the KFC Cornel. Despite the trials and tribulations, I was loving China already at this point. It was already a good few degrees warmer than Mongolia and a few pounds cheaper. I had some sort of stir-fried noodle dish which was about 2 pounds and a large bottle of some peach drink for 30p (although now as I look back on this, this was pricey compared to many establishments elsewhere in China).
The Sleeper bus was actually a delightful and civilised surprised compared with the previous night we had spent on the train. The bus had three rows of narrow bunk beds separated by two walkways down the middle. There was a top bunk and a bottom bunk, each with a pillow and some sheets and although not spacious it was clean, it wouldn’t be commandeered half-way through the night, and there was enough space to stretch out (although I wouldn’t want to be any taller).
The next morning we reached Beijing! We had to faff around a little on arrival before finding our hostel but it was relatively pain free, and whilst we went to check in, George went to get his girlfriend from the Hotel at the Airport.
The street our hostel was down looked how I imagined China to be. Big red lanterns hanging from the shop fronts, lots of neon lights and lots of people bustling down the narrow streets.
As it turned out the hostel we found was truly rank. It smelt like stagnant water, which unfortunately was true of most of Beijing, but our hostel specifically so. The en-suite did not have a mould free spot between the tiles, the bed was damp and in the middle of the night we were woken up by a rustling sound which we discovered derived from a mouse nibbling its way through our food bag!
We moved the next day to a Hotel round the corner which was much nicer and as it turned out cheaper as well! We stayed there for a few days to get our bearings after which we couch-surfed with a lovely Irish couple for a few days before staying in a different hostel on another side of Beijing.
During this time, we had some delicious (and some interesting) Chinese food including the famous Peking Duck;
Haggled and shopped at the clothes markets and antiques markets;
visited the Forbidden City;
And Hiked the Great Wall.
At this point we had to say goodbye to two of our Party. JP, who was heading off to Taiwan to visit his brother, and Alex who was off home.
We spent the next few days exploring the rest of the city and came across a matchmaking gathering where we found large throngs of parents who had written information about their children in the hope that they could match them with a suitor!
After spending a few days in Beijing I also came to notice a few interesting Chinese habits. Like for example the spitting. A lot of people spat in Mongolia, but here, you couldn’t get away from it. And it wasn’t just a little spit, like depositing an apple seed it was a rib retching gob of spittle that sounded most unpleasant! Where in England we have to dodge fresh blobs of chewing gum, and the occasional dog poo, in China we have having to dodge gobbets of spit. Another thing I noticed was how babies were extraordinarily clothed. From only a few weeks old to toddler age several Chinese babies were dressed in these baby-grow type things where instead of there being a button up flap where you can easily flap it down to change the baby’s nappy, there is nothing. No flap, no nappy, no nothing. So consequentially there are a lot of little babies waddling down the road, bottoms and whatever else hanging out, and squatting all over the place. Even mums just paused in the middle of the pavement to dangle their child inches from the ground so that they could do their business. There was also the clipping of fingernails in public, the picking of the partners spots, the snot rocketing and the staring. If it wasn't for the furrowed brows and curious gazes I would have sworn I was a celebrity! I never thought China would be surprised to see tourists.
After that we took the bus to Shanghai. This time, however, it was not quite as luxurious as our first experience. Due to the national holiday everyone and his brother was trying to travel the breadth and depth of China at this time, so much of the transport to anywhere was fully booked. We did initially want to get the train, but this was full, as was the sleeper bus, so we ended up just getting a hard seat on the coach. It wasn’t the most comfortable 16 hours but a full sized pillow definitely helped make the time pass quickly.
Another discovery I made at this point though was that for some reason restaurants and other places of food rarely have their own toilets. Perhaps because the Chinese feel that it is unhygienic to have a toilet in a place of food, I couldn’t say, but this meant that your only option, especially during a 16 hour bus ride with scheduled stops, was the public toilet. In England, this can be a relatively safe experience, there is usually toilet paper in one of the cubicles, possibly hand soap next to the tap, a bin and if you are lucky it might be cleaned on a regular basis. Worst case scenario you take your own tissue and wash your hands elsewhere but at the very least, there will still be a bin. Public toilets in China, however, are arguably some of the worst toilets I have ever been in, and this takes into account the wooden long drops all throughout Mongolia and the ones up Kilimanjaro (which up until this trip were without a doubt the worst toilets I had ever seen, smelt or heard). These particular toilets at the bus 'rest stop' on the way to Shanghai had at least a little divider to section off the ‘squats’, and was quite deserted. Others were not quite so glamorous but I will get onto those later. Basically the toilet was a tiled room with about 10 holes on the floor along one side, and waist high brick dividers between each of the holes. No doors, toilet paper, sinks or soap, and perhaps worst of all, no bins for womanly debris. But when you gotta go…
Shanghai, being another large city was fairly similar to Beijing but was more expensive and had a more European feel to it. We were visiting at a very busy time of year and this was apparent from the masses and masses of Chinese people everywhere. We Couch-Surfed with a lovely Chinese girl called Ashley for the first couple of nights and had a normal English breakfast of an egg which was a godsend!
We visited the busiest road in China and were told that on an average day over 1 million people would walk down it. I imagine due to the public holiday, there were even rows of what looked like army officials controlling the pedestrians across the roads.
After that we went to the Bund, the famous Shanghai City Skyline
Oh great, well it seems there are disadvantages of sitting on the bottom bunk. Apparently our bus is giving Tom, Dick and Harry, or their Chinese equivalents, lifts everywhere today, and where just moments before, I had the window to my left and the aisle to my right, I now have the window to my left, and another-person-who-appears-to-have-made-a-bed-out-of-the-aisle to my right, who is far too comfortable for his own good and is picking the spots on his face as we speak. I should really be used to this now though. Yesterday when we were shopping for camera gear, we went into a shop to ask if they had something, the man behind the desk said no very abruptly then promptly marched up to the full length mirror on the other side of the store and began squeezing the spots on his face. I couldn’t believe it was actually happening, thinking that surely he must be doing something else; adjusting a contact lens perhaps? So I had to ask Justin three times before believing my own eyes and averting my horrified gaze… Anyway I digress. He appears to have stopped now but I will be sure to mention it if he continues. If for no other reason than to spread the disgust and the horror I am experiencing is almost to diffuse and lessen the impact. A problem shared...
So after the Bund we had an idea!
(It took so bloody long to get this picture that I had to shoehorn it into the blog somehow!)
Well it wasn’t so much of an idea as a decision to go out for drinks and eats. We spent the next few days perusing Shanghai and found it quite agreeable. The shopping was again great, especially the pearl market which had an abundance of pearls of all shapes sizes and colours for low prices, but outside of the cheap markets things were a little pricier.
It was then time again to lose two of our number as George and Sarah had booked flights to Guilin. We then only had a couple of days left with Matt and Dave before we would be leaving for Xian so we met up with some friends Matt had made on the rally and went to a couple of bars in the French concession area (a very upmarket Expat populated area).
Although we would have loved to stay longer in Shanghai, as we would have in Beijing, other places were calling, so after a quick stop at the fabric market and a full on run down the platform to the train, we were on the way to Xian. Sixteen hours on a train seat was definitely much less tolerable than the coach. The seats were harder, you couldn’t recline them at all and unlike the coach where you only had to worry about the person next to you, the train seats were each facing another row of seats so you had to worry about the knees of the person in front of you every time you wanted to move your legs. Consequentially this meant that I didn’t move my legs at all and by the end of the journey I had legs resembling Dumbo’s Mother. I was going to insert a photo here but it is so truly and horribly horrific I can't bring myself to do it!
Just a quick pause from the re-cap to mention my friend, who has now fallen asleep with his head dangerously close to my elbow. I fear the gentle rocking of the bus may cause it to loll onto me. What I shall do then, I am unsure, but let’s hope I don’t have to consider it. Oh god, I’ve just thought, how am I going to sleep? It is only close to my elbow now because I am sitting up in the bed but when I lie down it will be close to my face! Let’s hope he gets off soon…
The Terracotta Warriors were obviously the main reason for our visit to Xi'an but we did see some other things too.
I heard mixed reviews about the warriors so was unsure what to expect but I can see why some people might be disappointed. The rows of warriors that had been reconstructed were amazing but if you were expecting a complete army and were unaware that each warrior was not found in its current form, but had been pieced together from all the fragments found at the time, then you might come away feeling cheated. I think that when the whole army has been completed it will be really incredible but that still doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a visit now.
After Xian, it was off to Chengdu most famous for the Panda breeding and Research centre. Spoiling ourselves a little, rather than just visiting the centre we paid the extra to become a panda keeper for the morning. Unfortunately this didn’t involve touching the pandas, but we did get quite close and we got to feed them panda cake. We even met the actual Kung Fu Panda! Disney Pixar came to the research centre and used one of the Pandas (I can’t remember his actual name now) to sketch and base the main character of their animation on. Feeding the pandas was great fun, but we didn’t realise how much of a big deal it would be until (and I’m not exaggerating) about 50 Chinese tourists suddenly spotted the usually lazy and probably slightly elusive pandas munching the apples on the end of our sticks and came running in stampedes to laugh and take photos.
It was good fun though; I never knew Pandas were so floppy either! When they lay on the grass they looked flat, as if they had been run over, or fallen awkwardly from a very tall tree, and they ate so slowly, grasping their little pieces of apple in their hands like fat men in panda suits reluctant to eat a piece of fruit. They were super cute, wish we got to hold one.
We got back to our hostel just in time for the free Dumpling making course. Not only did we get to eat all the dumplings we all made as a group, but the three most creative dumplings would win a bottle of beer, of which mine was one!
Our Chinese visas were now rapidly coming to an end but there was still so much we wanted to see. Stupidly we only had 30 day visas but it would have been just as easy to get a 60 day one, we just didn’t think we would need so long at the time. Justin really wanted to go to the National Park just outside of Chengdu, thinking it was only a 3 hour trip as it was highly recommended by our host in Shanghai, but when we asked the lady at our hostel, however, she told us it was 10 hours! She also said, though, that it was really worth a visit, but because of the lack of transport on certain days, going would mean that we wouldn’t have time to see Guilin. We made the decision to go to the park, and then to get the train straight to Hong Kong (where we don’t need a visa) spend a few days there, then get another visa to go back into China and see Guilin. We would need to get another visa for China anyway as paying for a second visa and getting the train to Vietnam would be cheaper than a flight so we had already decided on that.
The bus to the Park was traumatic to say the least. The roads were narrow and windy, which apparently didn’t suit the bowels of an old lady opposite us who spend most of the time vomiting into the bucket they had placed in the aisle as a bin. Moreover, when she had finished vomiting her husband or gentleman friend, or whatever, ever so kindly placed the bucket back in the centre of the aisle (right next to Justin) for all to see! If it wasn’t the roads that had made her ill, it would definitely have been the person clipping their fingernails at the front of the bus, or the public toilets. If I thought they couldn’t get any worse than previously, I was wrong. Instead of individual holes separated by a little wall partition, there was just a communal trough type set up! The worst thing though was that the last time there was no one else in the toilet so at least the lack of door wasn’t much of an issue, but this time, all the busses in the world ever seemed to have stopped at this toilet stop, so not only did you have to queue, hovering next to the unbearable stench, but when you entered the room you were forced to stand in the queue along the right hand wall until a ‘squat spot’ became available (at which point you would have to forcibly move towards it even though you really didn’t want to as there is really no such thing as a queue in China) where you would then have to squat and do your business with a line of women right in front of you watching and waiting for you to finish so they could hurry in after you.
The Hostel in Juizhaiguo also left a lot to be desired. We could only find a cheap, poorly rated dorm room on Hostel Bookers at the time, so because we didn’t want to be stuck without a bed, we just booked it. It wasn’t quite as bad as the reviews made out, but the bunk beds were made out of a very creaky frail looking wood and the mattress was only about 1cm thick so it wasn’t the most comfortable stay. On the other hand, searching for a little break in Chinese food, we decided to try another more popular looking hostel for dinner around the corner and sampled Yak meat (in the form of a burger) for the first time which was really tasty.
Despite the traumatic experiences the park was thoroughly worth a visit. I just made sure that I didn’t let a single drop of fluids touch my lips on the return journey.
We returned to the Hostel, spent a couple more days chilling out in Chengdu (during which we managed to get asked to feature in a promotional tourist video about Chengdu whilst we were eating in a busy Hotpot restaurant) and then took the 37 hour sleeper train to Hong Kong.
Not much to report about the train really (other than the obvious fact that it was looong) so I shall skip to reaching Shenzhen (the Chinese town that borders Hong Kong) two nights later. We weren’t really sure where we were going as we hadn’t booked any accommodation. We had hoped to couch surf again but we hadn’t had any replies, and all of the Hostels / Guesthouses that we had found online were extremely expensive, so we just hoped to find something suitable when we arrived.
We arrived in Shenzhen and got directed to a bus to Hong Kong. Climbing aboard we realised we should have asked for further direction as we didn’t know where to get off, or how much we were expected to pay to take us to our destination. The conductor lady didn’t speak English, but pointed hopefully to the bus route stuck onto the inside of the bus in an attempt to get us to point to the stop we were getting off at so that she could charge us appropriately. Unfortunately for us, there was not a single English letter on the board so we just shrugged and hoped that the border to Hong Kong would be obvious when we reached it. A few moments later, the conductor apparently found herself a translator and a Chinese lady came and tried to find out where we were going. We told her, and it turned out that she would also be getting off at the same stop we would need to, so she would show us where to go. We paid for the bus and when we got off she explained that we would need to get on the tube which would take us to the HK border. Still not quite knowing where we were heading for, we managed to go through customs into Hong Kong and hop on another train to what looked like a more central location. A quick consult of the outdated Rough Guide on my Kindle and a taxi later, we arrived on Nathan Road, supposedly the most popular area for guesthouses and cheap accommodation.
Within seconds of removing our bags from the boot of the taxi, a little Indian man appeared asking if we were looking for a guesthouse (to which I suppose the answer was obvious). It smelled a bit fishy but this was supposedly where all the guesthouses were located. We agreed to go with him to have a look at the guesthouse, whilst keeping a strong hold of all of our valuables. He took us into a very busy but run down looking high rise building, inappropriately named Mirador Mansions and entered the little grimy lift. We took the lift to the 8th floor, hardly fitting in the lift with our enormous bags on our backs and emerged on what looked like the floor of a very residential building. The building was a square with rooms all around the outside, and nothing in the middle so that the centre/courtyard of the building was exposed to the elements. There were poles laden with drying washing extending into this bottomless garden as well as small cages of birds.
We followed the man round the corner and sure enough as we looked across the square to some of the rooms on the opposite side of the building we could see that on various different floors the walls were painted and labelled with different guesthouse names. We arrived at one called the London Guesthouse and found another Indian man who agreed to show us a room. It was quite a strange set up. The room was literally a cupboard with a door. It had no window a small double bed, almost touching every one of the four walls, and an en-suite wet room. It did however have air conditioning and a TV! The price for this prison cell was apparently 450 Hong Kong dollars which I think of the top of my head equates to around £40! We thought that we should probably look at some of the other guesthouses to compare in price and size and our Indian companion was only too happy and eager to offer to take us there too, to show that they were full, or offered nothing better, but after having travelled a total of about 43 hours we wanted nothing more than to shower and relax. We managed to barter a bit, and finally agreed to stay for two nights at the price of 300 HK dollars, after which we thought we could go and check out the competition. It turned out that this was pretty much a standard price. We had to move to a different Guesthouse the next night however, as the owner told us he no longer had a room for us! But then offered a room with a window for the price of 250 HK dollars if we were to return, which we did.
Hong Kong was a very interesting city. After being in mainland China for so long, and previous to that Mongolia and Kazakhstan etc. where people rarely saw a foreign face, here you could not avoid them if you tried! There seemed to be as many tourists, and perhaps Expats as there were Chinese people so it had a very different and more cosmopolitan feel than any of the cities we visited in China. Everything was also much more expensive, so eating out became rather a luxury. We tried to buy things from the supermarkets and eat in our ‘room’ but even regular items there seemed to be more than you would expect to pay for them at home.
We chilled out for a couple of days, visited the electrical markets and camera shop where I purchased a new camera lens! Indulged in a bit of English TV (which was a real guilty pleasure) and caught up on Facebook. Whilst on Facebook we saw that Matt and Dave who we had only said goodbye to a few weeks previously in Shanghai would also be in Hong Kong over the next few days! We met up with them and managed to get a few of the HK sightseeing boxes ticked. We saw the light show over the harbour which frankly in my opinion was a bit of a disappointment. Perhaps this was only because it was a very muggy an misty day but some of the spotlights seemed to be very weekly and randomly shooting into the sky and it was also very short. The fountain show that we saw in Xi’an was much more impressive. We went to the Jade Market, visited Kowloon Park, took the ferry to Hong Kong Island, and took Tram up to the mountain to get a view of the city.
We finished it off with an evening at the races! Though somehow Justin and I managed, quite spectacularly, not to win a single bet.
After spending a little more time than intended in HK we got our visas back and headed back into China so that we could visit Yangshuo a beautiful town near Guilin famous for its rocky mountain peaks littering the landscape.
We read on various websites that the cheapest and easiest way was to get a bus from the border town Shenzhen straight to Yangshuo which was quicker than the train as the train went directly to Guilin and you would then have to get a bus back to Yangshuo.
We arrived at Shenzhen and before we had time to follow the instructions provided by our internet sources we were rounded on by an apparently psychic policeman who said, “Bus?” We told him we wanted to go to Yangshuo and he pointed us to a little office not in the same direction as the one we had been told to go to. We though there would be no harm in checking it out so inquired there about the tickets to Yangshuo. It seemed like this was a different company to the ones we had found information for on the web as the busses seemed to go at a different time. They also started off at nearly double the price! We told him that we knew of a much cheaper bus and that we would be going there instead he promptly lowered his prices and sold us a seat for 200 Yuan each which I believe is a whole 10 Yuan (1 pound) cheaper than it would have been had we gone to the alternative bus station. We left our bags there and he told us the bus would leave at 6:40 and we should be back at the ticket office at ten past 6.
When we got back to the ticket office there was another lady waiting there who seemed to also be waiting for a bus. We collected our bags, and the man who had sold us the tickets took us across the station to what looked like another bus ticket office and gestured for us to take seats. There were a few other people waiting here as well. The time passed, and eventually 6:40 came. We tried to ask the man about the bus but he didn’t speak much English, just said 7:00. I was a little worried as we didn’t even have a ticket to the bus, nor did we know where it would be leaving from but eventually he came over and gestured for us to follow. We traipsed across the station, down an escalator out onto the road, and appeared to be walking to Yangshuo ourselves! Then we stopped next to a decrepit looking minibus. Horrified I asked if this was the bus to Yangshuo! But the man laughed and said no no, bigger bus! By this we gathered that this bus was taking us to a bigger bus. We drove for about 10 minutes, then pulled up at another bus station removed our luggage and went to wait outside by the bus terminal. It was now gone 7pm so I wasn’t sure which bus we would be getting. I just hoped that it wasn’t the sort of scenario where we had bought ‘back hand’ tickets and we would now have to be squeezed into any left over seats of already booked busses. Our ‘chaperone’ for lack of a better word kept going up to bus drivers and conversing. Another 20 minutes or so passes when a bus pulled into the station and our ‘chaperone’ turned and said to us, this is it!
Time to sleep now I feel, (luckily my friend is trying to sleep sitting up now) I shall have to continue this another time!
We climbed on, and unfortunately it wasn’t as nice as the other sleeper bus we had been on. Instead of nice white duvets and pillows, there were multi-coloured old fleecy blankets and square scatter cushions. We didn’t seem to have assigned beds either so we just headed to two bottom bunks near the back and naively I was pleased and surprised that the bus appeared rather empty. I was indecisive for a few moments about whether to go on the top or bottom bunk and chose the bottom. A few hours into the journey I wished I’d chosen the top bunk for reasons mentioned above!
Eventually we arrived and found our hostel very early in the morning near the Li River. Yangshuo was a very beautiful spot and had lots of outdoor activities. The first day we took a Tandem and cycled one of the many tracks around the country side.
The next couple of days saw the most amazing dumplings,
Cormorant Fishing;
Further cycling (this time on separate bikes) and a scooter ride along beautiful routes, including the same view that is depicted on the back of the 20 Yuan note;
A bamboo boat down the river (and in Justin's case a Jump off a bridge);
A trip to Moon Hill (so named because it looks like a moon nestled in the side of a hill!)
And finally the caves to see the stalactites, stalagmites, mud baths and hot springs which, unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of because I was too scared to take my camera in there. It’s a shame too as the mud bath was brilliant! We were taken in a boat along a narrow river which lead under the rock into the dark heart of the cave. Accompanying us on the boat was a Chinese family who had decided it would be a good idea to take their elderly Grandmother. We all had to don helmets and as soon as we left the boat to walk further into the caves it was apparent there would be difficulties. The steps were slippery and the ground and ceiling were both uneven. At times we had to stoop and shuffle forward for several steps, knees bent, in a very Gollum-esque fashion to avoid striking our heads on the ceiling. This made our progress, as a group, very slow. Perhaps more so because of the excited anticipation we were feeling towards the mudbaths. But, we did eventually make it there, after the Chinese family decided they would stop to rest by the Hot springs whilst Justin and I carried on with the guide.
We also managed to get rid of a bit of our Kazakhstan money. No one has been willing to exchange it except for one place we tried in Hong Kong where the exchange rate was so low it was insulting! We had almost resigned ourselves to the fact we might have to keep it for the next 6 months and deal with it when we got home until it was suddenly deemed suitable currency. We had been on a hiking path for a few hours, but had started a little later in the day than intended and as we didn't want it to get dark, and miss the bus home we thought it would be quicker to flag down one of the bamboo boats steaming up and down the river to take us back to the town we needed to catch the bus back to our Hostel from. We were trying to haggle the price down but none of them were willing to take our 50 Yuan. It was actually the only money we had left, so thinking we would just have to walk it, we said to the last man that all we had was Kazakhstan Money expecting him to laugh and wave us away like so many had done before him, but he seemed intrigued. He took the note, made a call whilst inspecting it, haggled a few more Kazak notes from us, then waved us aboard!
I'm wondering now whether we should have tried a bit harder to get rid of it! I suppose there is still time, however, we are getting further and further away from Kazakhstan so it may become less and less likely to be taken...
The centre of Yangshuo itself was very quaint (if fairly touristy) and it was refreshing to have a break from all of the cities. We also managed to find a place near our hostel that served the most amazing coffee:
But it wasn’t as cheap as we would have liked. Now becoming a regular morning indulgence we decided to try to find a cheaper option somewhere further in the town. We stumbled across a small shop with its walls lined with books and saw that the coffees' were half the price of our usual haunt so thought we’d give it a try. I should have been suspicious. I ordered a cappuccino, but what arrived, in a thick mug decorated with snowmen was in fact instant coffee topped with whipped cream. Cute thought the little old man serving us was this did not excuse him from serving us such an atrocity, and needless to say, we didn’t go back.
We applied for our Vietnamese visas and the arrived back at the Hostel within 3 days. It was then time to head off to Vietnam!
It was pretty straightforward really. We got the bus from Yangshuo to Nanning which took about 6 hours. We then got the bus to the train station and bought our sleeper train tickets from Nanning to Hanoi for later than evening. We went and hung out in Dicos for a bit (China’s alternative to KFC) then boarded the train at 18:45. We got the middle bunks this time, mainly because we’d had the top and bottom bunks before so I wanted to see how they were. You still can’t sit upright on the middle bunk, so the bottom bunk is better for that, but unlike the top bunk, you can lie slightly propped up with your head on the pillow and you have the advantage of being able to reach the table between the bottom bunks. The train was due to arrive at about 5am Vietnam time (they are an hour behind China) but I didn’t get much sleep. The train stopped at around midnight at which point we all had to get off to go through the Chinese customs. We also had to take all of our luggage with us. It was quite quick though, there were not that many people, and about 20 minutes later we all piled back on the train again. I thought that the Vietnamese border might be quite close, so I tried to stay awake, but it turned out this part of no man’s land was pretty large. At about 2am be arrived at the Vietnamese customs, but fortunately this time we did not need to remove our luggage and it was again fairly quick.
At about 5am two days ago we arrived in Vietnam.
