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The weather hasn't cleared up from the last blog entry so we didn't do a great deal of sight seeing done in Hong Kong. Considering we couldn't even see Hong Kong peak, or even the tops of some of the city skyscrappers for that matter, there wasn't much point in climbing the peak for that long awaited bird's eye view of the city so a post card will have to do.
From Hong Kong we took a boat ride to Macau for a night. Macau is part of China but it is a Special Administrative Region (SAR) like Hong Kong so people still have a degree of freedom. The Portugese landed in Macau a few hundred years back and were allowed to stay as they opened up trade between China and the rest of Europe. There are still Portuguese people living in Macau and there is still a hint of the Potuguese influence around town with some beautiful colonial style buildings, catholic churches and Portugese streets signs. As far as food goes though we couldn't find anything other than chinese food. Macau is the only place in China where gambling is legal so it is like a mini Las Vegas where all the richies come for the weekend to blow their money. Huge casinos dot the streets in between the run down apartments and street venders. Up until 4 years ago Casino Lisboa was the only casino allowed on the small island. When licensing restrictions where lifted big name casinos like MGM grand, the Venetian and Wynn popped up for their share of the profits. We walked through the fancy casinos in our very underdressed atire but we didn't have a gamble. We are backpacking afer all and are trying to keep within budget.
The Chinese food here definately isn't as good as our version of chinese food back home (Justin - now i know what you were talking about). There is definately plenty to chose from on the menu (if you can get one in English) but it is usually something you wouldn't even dream about eating like pig lung soup, chicken feet, duck hearts and pigs intestine . . . the list goes on. We tend to stick to the basic but that usually consists of lots of rice and bok choy with a small amount of chicken or pork which is mainly bone. As a result we have had Maccas on the odd occassion -terrible i know but sometimes you need a break from rice and bok-choy.
We arrived in Guilin in mainland China 2 nights ago and the weather is here is just as bad. It's like the south of China is covered by a blanket of clouds and it looks like it's settled in for a while. It's quite cold but once you get moving it gets quite steamy so the trousers that zip off into shorts are coming in very handy. We were very spoiled in Hong Kong with most poeple being able to talk english and with western toilets with toilet paper. Now we are in mainland China and nothing is in english and we are back to the typical Asian style of travel with squat toilets - don't forget to take your own toilet paper! I dread when i need to take a #2, it has been a few days so i am sure that time is coming.
Our travel plans originally included us visiting and going through Tibet into Nepal. At this stage Tibet has been closed to all tourists until May 1st which will put us out by about 10 days. We are looking at other options at this stage, ultimately we would love to go to Tibet but we are just not sure, and nor is any one else, what is to come. Every time we go to the internet we check the newspapers and there is often more news of riots (not in any of the places we are going so don't worry mum) which might lead to them to postponing the re-opening. Even before all of this happened you had to get a permit to get into Tibet which is often hard to obtain. I think with all that is going on it might be even harder. We'll keep you all posted.
Ciao - Gis and Trent
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