Livin' the celebrity lifestyle

Pick of the day: Public WC, Yushan train station

Style: Cinematic squat

Atmosphere: Communist

Extras: The communal atmosphere here is a bit of a taste of the last of the communism in china. The new style is consumer communism where EVERYTHING exists for profit. Not here though. This loo was free and to top it off the trench running the length of the stalls (which have no doors) gives a river like view as you look down at what those around you have offered.

13/04/13 to 23/04/13: SanQing Shan National Park, Yangshuo, Nanning to the China/Vietnam border

Our next stop from Shanghai was a lonely planet recommendation for a more off the beaten track Chinese national park, SanQing Shan.

Getting there proved more irritating and difficult than we’d envisioned. First off was a train to the town of Yushan, where it should have been possible to get a bus to the base of the mountain where we had planned to stay. In all our journey from station to hotel had three main grievances.

Number 1: We came out of the station and everyone is screaming SanQing Shan at us. We pick a friendly looking lady with a three wheeled flat bed and jump in. She did not take us to SanQing Shan. She took us to the bus station. False advertising.

Thinking we'd hit the jackpot

Number 2: On arriving at the bus station we were told there was no bus to the part of the mountain we wanted but we could get one to the other side of it. Not much use. Then a young girl said we could get the bus half way and then a taxi for 80RMB. Then everything seemed ok and people were nodding and we were ushered onto a bus.

Number 3: Turns out the bus wasn’t taking us to SanQing Shan but decided to drop us in a town near where we wanted to be, next to a taxi. The driver was unfortunately of the rip off the foreigner variety and decided that instead of 80RMB, he wanted 200RMB. When we said this was ridiculous he pointed out it was getting dark and we had no other choice. Dickhead.

Having finally arrived in the correct part of the mountain, considerably poorer and in a very bad mood we checked into our dodgy hotel (rock hard beds, no restaurant) and went to bed early ready for trekking into the national park the next day.

Early the next morning a lot of noise heralded the arrival of what looked like half of china in tour buses. We headed out, found a couple of shops that sold crisps, biscuits and cakes and armed ourselves for the journey (no breakfast though as there were no actual restaurants in the town and neither of us could stomach super noodles at 8am). We decided to forgo the cost of the cable car and walked to the trail head in the national park. Error. Not only was it a 2 hour walk up around 800m vertical ascent of stone steps (seriously hard work) but the whole way up we were hounded by Chinese tourists who kept shouting hello at us and constantly either took our photo or insisted being photographed with us. We now know what it must be like to be a minor celebrity and it is about the least fun thing we can imagine.

Having reached the top of the cable car we climbed another few hundred steps to gain the walkways which had been built into the sides of the granite spires for which the park is famous. For some reason most of the Chinese tourists did not get this high and so we left the flag-waving, loud-music-via–microphone-playing crowds behind and more or less had the mountain to ourselves. The huge granite spires were breath taking and the walkways built into the mountain meant that we could see them from a vantage point that we would otherwise have struggled to reach.

errr... more board walk

We walked back down to the bottom as the sun was setting thoroughly happy with our little bit of mountain time but a little worried that our legs might actually give way. Super noodles for dinner in the absence of anything better and the next day we had to negotiate trying to get back to the train station. The complications of this were compounded by the fact that our legs hurt so badly that neither of us could get either up or down stairs or manage anything more than a very slight incline on the flat. We were told that there were no buses back to town. We chose not to believe this and went into one of the posh hotels where an English speaker told us there was a bus at 3pm. A private bus driver swore blind that there were no buses going to Yushan and that we had better just pay him to take us there. We refused and waited. Turns out a few hours later that 

the same bus driver was driving the 3pm bus to Yushan!

He dropped us somewhere in the town and having no idea where we were we clung desperately to a kindly-looking elderly couple who had got off at the same time as us and a young couple. We showed them a scrap of paper on which we had got the man in the hotel to write ‘train station’ in Chinese and in an act of completely unexpected kindness the lady of the young couple hailed a rickshaw, bundled us into it, told the driver where to go and paid for it with her own money. We left before we even had the chance to realise what was happening, let alone pay her back. We were pretty touched.

And so, on the back of yet another pot noodle we headed to Yangshuo.

We had been looking forward to Yangshuo with its Karst limestone peaks and more tourist friendly atmosphere. On arriving we realised one thing. It had suddenly got hot, real hot, and muggy to boot. I(Ben) had been dreading a haircut but now the need was desperate so I picked the best looking place and got a buzz cut. Cue heat stroke the next day!

We had been keen to see the dragons back rice terraces several hours north of Yangshuo so hopped on a tour. We had thought this would just be the transport there but in true Chinese style we had suddenly found we had joined the flag waving masses. We managed to convince our “tour guide” to allow us to bugger off on our own once we had arrived thus saving us from the more hectic tourist traps there that the guide’s only job is to guide you to and actually spend more time exploring the terraced hills. These were beautiful and were just tiny terrace after tiny terrace (each no more than a metre deep and high but thousands of metres up the hillsides) that were each irrigated by their own little water supply and sprouted green rice a few times a year. Unfortunately the heat stroke had kicked in and I spent most of the day wanting to vomit.

Its like walking round a 3D OS map

The following day we hired some bikes and went for to explore up the valleys. Our friends Mark and Ruth(from Mongolia and Shanghai) were staying at a nice place in the countryside so we went there and luckily they showed us the best place to cycle to along the river where other tourists were taking bamboo rafts poled by locals back down stream. It was hot sweaty work cycling in the heat which was only exacerbated when the local kids decided to jump on the back for a lift. The buggers even ran off with out paying for the ride!  After a nice day’s ride we met them back for cocktails, dinner and a swim in the river.

Honestly, wtf?

Bike 'n' boat Yangshou style

The best way to cool off

Yangshuo is one of, if not the most, famous climbing location in china (sport climbing anyway), so we hired a 

rope, draws and harnesses and biked off to the nearest section, Wine Bottle, so named thanks to a karst peak eroded like a wine bottle. Not quite the iconic Moon hill with its tuffa clad arch, we found that the easy grades suited us thanks to months of no exercise. We got shut down big time!

Vi was more happy about the memories of good red wine invoked by the crag name than the actual climbing

Not the best place for sunsets but you get the idea of the landscape

On our final day in Yangshuo we signed up for a cooking class to get some dishes and skills to take home with us. This proved to be a fantastic experience with the day kicking off with a trip to the local farmers market (a genuine farmers market, not the middle class things we have at home) before getting into the 6 dishes we were going to cook. We learnt some great things such as heat up the wok till it is smoking BEFORE adding the oil otherwise your food will taste oily, and other nuggets.

Heading out for breakfast

In Mongolia its all boiled in a wok. In china its all fried in a wok. The cleaver is ubiquitous throughout.

After failing to get a visa extension in Beijing we had toyed with the idea of heading to Hong Kong to get a new visa before heading to Vietnam, but after much deliberation we decided the expense was too high and it would be better to just risk the overnight train. (As a recap our Chinese visa expired the day before our Vietnamese one began)

The train to Vietnam departs from the provincial capital of Nanning which really has little else going for it. We overnighted here in a nice new hostel which seems set up for the Vietnamese-China overland traveller and got the train the following evening.

Loading up on train snacks

Unlike all our other train border crossings this time we had to disembark with all our bags at both border points. In the end we left china with 28minutes left on our visa which was an improvement on Russia, but thanks to the time difference entering Vietnam we arrived 30mins before our Vietnamese visa began (it’s an hour difference, but also an hours train ride between the two border points). Luckily the Vietnamese didn’t really give a crap so stamped us in anyway and  we got back on the train for 4 hours kip before we would pull into Hanoi…. 

Sauntering to Shanghai

Pick of the day: Ok so we forgot the loo shot for this section so this is one of my 'stock' collection from the trip and this was actually from Beijing.

Style: None

Atmosphere: Pun-tastic

Extras: Check out the photo above. Whats the name of the toilet paper? Now Whats it sat on?
Its a play on words/objects. Get it?

06/04/13 – 13/04/13: Pingyao, Xi’an and Shanghai

We arrived in Pingyao at some ungodly hour of the morning but thankfully our hotel did pick up from the train station and we were duly transported by electric golf cart to a beautiful courtyard hotel on one of the main thoroughfares in town. We actually struggled to find cheap accommodation because of the weekend (Chinese people really do live for the weekend and escape their homes in droves at the on Saturdays) but the upside of this was that we had a beautiful ensuite room.

This dude made some weird cakeyflanbread things. VERY tasty

Our room was on the left in this lovely little courtyard yard hotel

Pingyao is famous as being an authentic ancient walled town with the city walls and most of the streets, alleyways and buildings inside being intact from the 14^th century. We essentially spent our day wandering round and exploring as well as laughing at the tourist tat on offer including ‘oba-mao’ tshirts and bags. Also we noticed that most of the stray dogs in the town (there are a lot in china, except for the places that are famed for dog hotpot) appear to be interrelated and virtually all had a massive underbite giving them a permanently perplexed, muttley-esque air which was fairly amusing. We had some wonderful food from the local caff and then a great sleep in the biggest bed in the world (literally about 8 feet wide) before continuing our exploring the next day.

Its so dusty in this town the best way to build is to stack the bricks and wait for the next dust storm to fill the cracks

Even the street signs look cool

The roof tops of Pingyao from the city tower

Another reason way pandas fail to breed. They are far too absorbed in chinese chess

That evening we took the train to Xi’an and when we had booked the train there had only been ‘hard seat’ class available so we expected something pretty bad but were still totally unprepared for the horrors ahead. Hard seat does not literally mean that the seats are hard, it means (as far as I can tell) that it’s hard on your sanity. Imagine a normal town-to-town train like we have at home with 50-100 seats or so per carriage. Then imagine twice the people to seats being put into said carriage, for 10 hours straight. I was lucky in that I got my seat early on but I had my feet on my big rucksack, little rucksack on lap and literally moved nothing except my left arm for the rest of the journey (not even to pee). Ben was less lucky- the dude sleeping in his seat refused to give it up so having got on the train at midnight he spent 5 hours sat on his rucksack in the aisle before finally sitting in the seat he paid for at 5am. Then add in chain smoking from passengers right next to you. Then add in constant spitting on the floor- indoors. Then add so much rubbish that the two times it was swept up the pile came waist high. We came out of that shell shocked and swearing that we would rather walk to the next city than do that again.

Hitting up the food in Xi'ans Muslim quarter

Spicy potatoes. Eat near access to a toilet.

We arrived in Xi’an pretty much screwed but couldn’t really go to bed so instead we headed up the muslim quarter for which Xi’an is well known and managed to get some awesome grub including some pots of tiny little curried fondant potato. That evening we signed up to go on a free tour with our hostel. First they took us to the ‘skyscape’ which is essentially a shopping area that has been roofed over with a massive LCD screen. The screen shows a constantly changing sky from space to changing seasons and even a giant reef view. It was like we had suddenly been transported to Tokyo and was very impressive. We then had a little wander around the local park where plenty of people were out strolling in the warm air. A man playing a violin was attracting a crowd and we suddenly realised that he was playing greensleeves while nearby a crowd of about 100 elderly Chinese did synchronised musical tai chi to some Bollywood tunes. We started to wonder whether our sleep deprived state was starting to make us hallucinate. Then to top it off we watched a huge light and fountain show where the water bursts were timed to coincide with the alternating classical European and Chinese music. Weird dreams that night.

Fried (quail) egg on a stick!

You had to time walking down the street just right to avoid el scorcho

Under the sea in a shopping centre

Flash mobs have been around for a while in china. Or synchronised tia-chi dancing. Amateurs not tolerated.

The following day we took the bus to go and see the iconic Terracotta Warriors which are located just outside of Xi’an. We managed to push our way through all the guides who kept telling us that without them we would see nothing and understand nothing and made it to the 3 pits and museum to have a look for ourselves. The sight was incredible. There are 3 pits that have been found so far and even they have only been partially excavated with a lot of the warriors destroyed but there are thousands of statues that are in perfect condition. For those that don’t know the Terracotta Warriors is a burial  site for an ancient chinese emperor who believed that he needed who have replicas of everything from his life to serve him in the afterlife.  Thousands upon thousands of pottery warriors made, each unique with their own uniform, expression and hairstyle and an entire army was created from the top generals to crossbowmen, archers and cavalry complete with pottery horses. Each was also painted and gilt and placed in battle positions. On top of that an entire pottery city was made which included city walls, sewer systems, everything needed for an imperial court such as acrobats and jugglers and also all the supplies so bakeries and bakers, forges, grocers and animal keepers- all made of pottery. To say it was impressive is an understatement.

Hands posed for comic effect

Pit 2, impressive

Pit 1. Crazy impressive. All these guys are individual. Wouldn't want to be the night guard

Having sufficiently wowed our socks off we then caught the overnight train to Shanghai.

THE Shanghai skyline

Arriving in the afternoon we had time for a quick wander down East Nanjing Street (a classic) to the Bund which is the old riverfront from which you can see the iconic Shanghai skyline. The whole experience (and I take Ben’s word for this but it definitely seemed like it to me) felt so much more like New York or Sydney than an Asian city. We found a great man down near our hostel who sold food from a wok mounted on the bike of a bicycle where we got our first street vendored egg fried rice in China which was amazing! Awesomely enough we also did not get food poisoning and the next day were good to go for a wander round Shanghai’s old town and Yunan Gardens which are a wonderful little haven full of blossoming cherry trees, tiny ornamental bridges over carp ponds and beautiful little pagodas made for an afternoon chill.

Obligatory couple shot to prove we are still traveling together.

We then headed on to the Shanghai museum which was impressive, especially considering it was free (well, excepting the sunglasses that some little shite stole) and then we met up with a couple of friends (Ruth and Mark) from the Trans-Mongolian and headed to the famous French Concession area of the city for some food, cocktails and beers (from the mad dog brewery which is a cool bar if you ever happen to be in town). After a slightly hungover sleep we headed back to the French Concession for some exploring (the area is huge with a myriad of tiny little alleyways that house shops selling everything you can imagine buying and a good few things you didn’t know you needed). We also went to a museum of propaganda posters dating from throughout Mao’s rise and until just after his death. It was a real treat to get to see them as most were destroyed during the various purges and in particular after Mao’s demise and they are completely fascinating (competition with Britain for steel and grain production seemed to be a big thing). Then there was a final visit to the Bund which was a little surreal as since it was a weekend there was a lot of couples who had got married and were getting their wedding photos with the Shanghai skyline in the background, and by a lot I mean in a 20 minute walk we counted 16 separate couples.

The river is swarming with boats decked out like christmas trees.

Then it was time to move on again, this time south to Yushan.

There may be 9 million bicycles, but most are electric

Pick of the day: Hutong Public restroom, Beijing (Just north of the Forbidden City)

Beijing is littered with public toilets. They are everywhere, free and generally clean. They often appear to show names and photos of the cleaning staff, maybe in a name and shame way. They often have great little signage; one suggested I step a little closer to the urinal to aid my aim. This one was located in the Hutong (network of alleys) near to where we were staying. There seemed to be people using it from local houses so I can only assume the public restrooms may often be the only restroom…

Style: Squat party

Atmosphere: Communist

Extras: Presumably installed for the more adventurous Chinese is a lovely little western sit.

29/03/13 to 05/04/13 – Beijing

“Welcome back to civilisation”, that was the response of our hostel owner in Beijing when we mentioned we had come over from Mongolia. It wouldn’t take long for the reality of that statement to hit us.

To us this only read "goodbye boiled mutton"

The train ride from Ulaanbaatar was fantastic. We had booked 1^st class due to the thought we might need a reward after 3^rd classing through Russia/it was only £20 more than 2^nd class/I had an ulterior motive. 1^st class is definitely the way to go, with two sharing a cabin which in 2^nd class would house 4, a carriage attendant who doesn’t show openly that she hates you being there and a shared loo with the next cabin.

Living the highlife and the first privacy in about 3 weeks!

As we rolled through the Mongolian steppe I finally decided to grow a pair and ask Vi to marry me. Somewhat to my surprise she hadn’t seemed to have seen this coming and after a little moment she said yes. Which was a bit of a relief after a massive outlay on a ring (see photo).

Its an austerity fashion trend

With all the excitement we decided to head to the dining car for a celebration drink where we managed to rustle up enough remaining Tugrug to buy a can of coke each (don’t expect much from this tight fisted wedding).

Beijing was a slap in the face as we walked out of the main railway station, with more people milling about out front than we had come across during the rest of the Trans-mongolian. Taking a taxi alone gave us a preview of the chronic overcrowding in much of china. The queue like much of the queues we have so far experienced seemed down to supply not meeting demand, or in another way, the infrastructure unable to support the population.

Having arrived late afternoon the only thing we had in mind was a slap up Peking duck meal. Crispy duck the chinese way is soooo different to what we recognise at home. Whilst at home it is all about the breast meat, here it’s the crispy fat that makes it. It was a whole new taste sensation and one we repeated again before leaving Beijing.

Our first full day was spent in a fruitless expedition to the Public Security Bureau (PSB) in an attempt to extend our Chinese visas. While entering the building was quite intimidating, as the PSB is sort of like the KGB, the whole thing proved pointless when they stated we had to pay them $3000 each to prove we could afford to stay. We don’t have that much money so no extension. We spent the rest of the day exploring the Lama temple and some Hutongs (alleyways). That night we met up with a fellow trans-mongolian survivor, Paul (www.paulsadventure.com) and headed into Dongcheng night market. This is basically a massive open air food market that sells all the usuals of noodles and dumplings as well as some interesting variants. Notable among them were bats on sticks, centipede kebabs, and barbequed snake/tarantula/cockroach. We only really had the balls to go for mystery meat on sticks and something  that may or may not have been crayfish.

Mystery meat kebabs

These weren't too bad if it hadn't been for the horrid paste they'd added

Day 2: Next up was the Temple of Heaven and market. Beijing has enough sights for a couple of weeks so we thought we would get in the main ones. Initially we’d planned on 5 days in the capital but due to the train being fully booked that was extended to 7days. The Temple of Heaven is actually more of a public gardens with some impressive Buddhist temples and structures about. As with much of what we were to see the scale of buildings and landscaping were impressive. Before heading back to the hostel we had a look in the Pearl Market. This is like a huge department store where each floor has its specialty, with traders having small sections on each floor. This, however, just means that as you walk around a floor you get offered the same tat hundreds of times. We did find, however that the prices are ridiculously inflated. We got offered a kimono for 1000 Yuan (around £100) which we didn’t want and the price as we walked away went down and down until as a joke we offered 60 Yuan (£6) and they accepted. Annoyingly this means we now have a kimono to carry around.

Team shot in the temple of heaven

Signs, endless comedy in china

Day 3: The sun was shining today and for the first time in what has felt like months (including time in the UK) we (well Ben) were able to walk around in just a shirt. Our mission for the day was to tour the Summer Palace, which is a huge complex of gardens, palaces and temple buildings based around a lake. Being such a big site it is at the end of the North West bound metro line. The complex is stunning and varied with a small mock town around a canal, and a cherry blossom lined walkway by the lake. The area makes you feel as if you are in any major western city gardens such as Central park in New York or Sydney as the gardens are fringed by a high rise city skyline. 

The view from the hill in the Summer Palace across the lake to Beijing

Cherry blossom walkway

At least its not a wet hillock

That evening we splashed out on a Sichuan restaurant which did a set menu. God knows what we ate, but bloody hell it was good and bloody hell it was hot (both going in and going out…). The place was called ‘Source’ in Dongcheng, seek it out if you’re ever in the city.

Hot and spicy on the way in and out

Day 4: So this was the big day. THE sight to see in Beijing (within the city at least) is the Forbidden City/Tiannamen Square link up. The forbidden city is essentially a giant walled palace where the Emperor and his government were based. Now open to the world this is the busiest tourist spot in perhaps the whole of China. China has a massive tourist industry with thousands of domestic tourists shipped around the country on organised coach tours. As a foreign tourist this means you share the spot with thousands of usually rural or middle class Chinese from the provinces who have never seen a westerner before. Cue photo time. Whether just a snap from a distance or posing with the mother in law this gets old VERY quickly and though it isn’t meant in a rude way it is a bit grating when you realise its only because you are a bit of a freak. The Forbidden City itself however, was hugely impressive with so much to see you could easily spend a whole day just wandering around marvelling at it all. Tiannamen square was a let down. No men with their shopping facing off with tanks anywhere.

The Forbidden city on a week day and thankfully relatively quiet.

Day 5: Ok so the real big sight is the great wall and it did NOT disappoint. We hit up the Jinshanling section rather than the Chinese coach tour haunt of Badoling in order to get a less crowded and less hawker fuelled trip. The Wall is amazing, though not visible from space, tracing its outline along knife back ridges in either distance is a sight to behold. Go see it, I won’t do it justice.

Steep steps some people felt the need to go hands knees up and down. Ridiculous.

Day 6: As Beijing could be called little china we pencilled in a couple of days to get our bartering on and get some souvenirs here on the cheap. Along with a return to the Pearl market (not for Pearls) we visited the Silk market (not for silk). That evening was duck take 2 with a Finnish couple we met at the wall and some Chinese Acrobatics. As expected that was as impressive as china has proved so far and the Chinese/American audience combo proved more excitable than a 3 year old on an (old) blue Smartie binge. Brilliant.

Duck and Beer. Not mutton.

Day 7: More shopping and an epic pizza with enough leftovers for our overnight train to Pingyao. Incidentally, cruel though it may be, since we have had to get used to eating everything with chopsticks very quickly it was extremely entertaining watching Chinese people try to eat pizza with a knife and fork.  They didn’t seem to get the point of the spiky bit at the end of the fork and mostly tried to use a sideways fork/hand combo to scoop pizza into their mouths. Chinese train classes are structured a little different to Russian. In order of classiness with the best first is Soft Sleeper, Hard Sleeper, Soft Seat, Hard seat. Soft seat is rare and on this and all but one journey we went hard sleeper (more on that next time…). It is basically Russian 3^rd class, open booths but with a 3 bed bunk instead of 2. Darker, generally quieter and with a duvet it’s much better than Russian 3^rd class.

As a result we arrived in Pingyao refreshed and ready for the next section of our journey.