Back to life but not quite to reality

OK so to say that it has been a while since I last posted anything would be a bit of an understatement! Unfortunately the Great firewall of China wouldn't let me get onto blogspot and since I've been in Vietnam (crossed the border on June 30th) I seem to have been just a wee bit busy. Not to mention that wood huts on Cat Ba island don't come equipped with internet access.

Anyway, rather than spend the rest of my time in Vietnam trying to catch up on what we did in China I have decided to run through our most memorable moments.


Beijing - really enjoyed our time here, could have easily stayed for longer

• Gazing up at the 18 metre tall buddha carved from the trunk of a white sandalwood tree at Yonghegong Lama Temple
• Learning how to make dumplings amid much hilarity (mainly at the state of our dumplings) at Gulou Hostel
• Walking the length and breadth of Beijing trying to find an ATM that would give us money
• Seriously considering eating a scorpion on a skewer...until it moved
• The haven that is the airconditioned Beijing subway system
• Standing on the Great Wall of China with the sun shining and being able to look in both directions without seeing anyone else
• A whole Peking Duck fed the both of us for les than 7 quid - delicious
• Wandering around the Imperial Gardens of the Forbidden City and Steve making me take undercover photos of Arsene Wenger (manager of Arsenal football team in case you were unaware)
• Insisting we walk left out of the Temple of Heaven station and walking around half of the complex before finding an entrance when we could have turned left out of the station and walked right in (Steve is still smug about this)
• Steamed buns by the lake and then climbing to the top of the Summer Palace complex
• Chinese roadworks = digging up an entire street and running balance beams across water filled ditches
• Having fun on the hard sleeper train from Beijing to Pingyao after negotiating Beijing West train Station (the largest train station I have ever seen)

Pingyao - a sweet little walled town. Didn't get up to much, just relaxed and wandered aimlessly

• Harmony guesthouse with gorgeous garden courtyard
• Cute Pingyao puppies
• Playing made up games with a the little boy of the family who owned the reataurant where we ate lunch one day - singing, dancing, cards and kung fu
• Finally mastering how to eat noodles with chopsticks
• Buying Mao's little red book
• Successfully buying our first train tickets without help from any english speakers (Steve would like to add that he bought these tickets as I was in a bad mood with China at the time. I would like to add that this was after not much sleep and some unpleasant encounters with rude people)
• Jumping onto a (not quite stationary) train in the middle of the night by the light of the stars and a naked light bulb some distance down the train platform

Xi'an - had a blast in Xi'an and made friends with a sound Irish couple

• Wandering the Muslim Quarter and snacking on sticky rice pudding, dumplings, pea flour cakes, dried kiwifruit and fried savoury pancakes
• Looking across Terracotta Army, some soldiers restored and in formation, some still emerging from the earth
• Riding a tandem bicycle around the 14km city wall
• Discovering a carpark barbeque where the locals ate meat and guzzled beer into the wee hours (and us with them). Trying cow intestine (tastes like scallops)
• Being 2 of thousands visiting the fountain and light show at the big goose pagoda - madness

Dehang - Tiny little village of Miao minority people. Lots of walking, beer and pot noodle (after the insect incident)

• Met a charming pair of Students from Xi'an on the train to Dehang. They studied technological english and were really sweet
• Meeting a 68 year old portrait painter from Guangzhou and having a long boozy lunch with him on the edge of the village square. Becoming firm friends and laughing constantly all without being able to speak to eachother except by pointing at words in our phrasebook
• Randomly ordering food from a chinese menu and ending up with 4 plates; one with bak choi, one with cabbage one was an omelette and one piled high with insects stir-fried with green and red chillies (tasted like prawns)
• Being shown the river out the back of our guesthouse after asking about how to wash clothes
• Going on long beautiful walks in the surrounding karst countryside; watching people go about their daily lives on the rice paddies
• Seeing giant moths, bats, lizards, snakes, dragon flies of every possible colour, huge hairy caterpillars, crabs, water buffalo, tiny frogs. The noise from the rice paddies at night was unbelievable but very easy to drift off to
• Having a fight with a tiny old bird of a woman who demanded money after forcing me to put on an old shirt and pushing me into the seat of her loom (Or rather Steve had a fight with her - I was rendered speechless by the iron grip with which she clutched my arm!)

Fenghuang - Our time here was coloured a little by the fact that we couldn't get out of this town and that being 2 of only 4 westerners meant we got a lot of attention, especially with Steve's baby blue eyes. A very pretty town though.

• Not actually knowing if we were in Fenghuang or not for the first hour as the bus station had been moved since our map was printed and all the signs were in chinese characters - this led to a less than pleasant traipse around the town as we tried to find a guesthouse in the sweltering heat backpacks and all
• Eating whole freshwater crabs (shell and all)
• Being amazed at how quickly a room can change from affordable haven during the day to bug filled hell hole at night
• Not being able to buy a bus/train ticket ANYWHERE. Consequently feeling trapped and claustrophobic in a town with no other foreigners in it where noone spoke english and noone could understand our pitiful attempts at chinese
• Being stopped every 50 metres so people could take a photo with us; having to stop every 10 metres or so to negotiate our way around people who didn't ask us for photos but blocked our path to take them anyway
• Feeling much better about Fenghuang as soon as we were able to buy bus tickets to Zhang Jia Jie - enjoying our last night by eating icecream with our feet dangling over the river while the sun set behind us
• Watching paper lanterns float down the river after dark

Zhang Jia Jie - we just chilled out here for a couple of days

• The joy of being in a clean room with double bed TV, air con and mosquito nets on the windows
• Exploring the our first chinese supermarket - buying random things with funny pictures on the labels just to see what they tasted like. A surprising winner was sweet bread rolls with ham sausages; mung bean biscuits sadly were no good
• Watching the british Grand Prix in our room with cheap beer and pot noodle

Guilin - no real desire to go back here

• Getting very annoyed with 2 touts who after having put us on a bus to Yangshuo made us get off the bus, walk across the bus depot (in the rain) only to get back on the same bus when it had driven to the other side. Luckily we only paid once and we kept our luggage with us. We shouted a bit which made us feel better. That was pretty much our only experience in Guilin.

Yangshuo - spent a good few days here enjoying the town and the surrounding countryside

• Mountain biking 19 km around paddie fields and karst landscapes - getting very sunburnt with my day pack on and having the most ridiculous tan lines seen on a human being ever
• Floating down the river on a boat and enjoying the view (and the breeze)
• Cycling to and climbing up moon hill and admiring the fantastic view
• Actually beginning to enjoy the hectic chinese traffic - an overwhelming sense of accomplishment washes over you after surviving it on a bike!
• Passing a lady crouched on the side of the road eating lychees after doing her grocery shopping. Out of her shopping bag poked out two little puppy paws

Nanning - we basically stopped in Nanning as a means to get to Vietnam. Stayed in a wicked little hostel for a couple of nights.

• Being lost in a bus depot somewhere in Nanning after getting off our bus and meeting a young man who, after seeing where we needed to get to in relation to where we were, insisted on driving us for over half an hour, calling ahead to our hostel to double check the address and then not accepting any money or food or anything from us - what a sweet guy
• Having a night on the beers with a group of Americans and Finns
• Steve catching someone with their hand in his pocket
• Passing through the chinese border in an orderly fashion (there were even queues and shuttle buses) and then entering the mad free-for-all that is the vietnamese border control - literally throw your passport over a crowd of 20 at a guy behind a window and wait for him to pass it to another guy that will call your name out at random