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"I think this soup's seafood, I've just seen a mussel in mine"
......"I don't think it's seafood Dan, mine's got a claw in it!"
And so began our introduction to the wonderful world of Chinese cuisine.
HONG KONG
We excitedly stepped off the plane in our second destination of Hong Kong & were immediately confused. Had we been in India that long?!
Firstly, everything is so clean, there are no animals wandering the streets, the roads seem to have active traffic laws & not a single horn was to be heard.
The airport express pulled up (on time) resembling a spaceship compared to the Indian equivalent, "what the hell is that" LJ panicked!
The India that we had left & the Hong Kong we were first greeted with, couldn't be any more different....we had suddenly been transported back into the 21st century or so we thought. As it turned out, our prebooked room was located in Hong Kong's oldest, most decrepid building & also at the centre of the Indian population of Kowloon, we felt right at home.
All in all, it took us less than 2 hours from landing, getting through customs, checking in & showering to be sat beneath the golden arches with Big Macs in hand. It is impossible to explain to you how good the meal tasted, 8 weeks of curried vegatables and goat can take it's toll on even the strongest of men. We made a pact there & then to eat as much western food in Hong Kong as our bellies would take, in preparation for the incoming challenge of China.
Hong Kong is fantastic you can't help but feel happy amongst the fast paced life of the huge population of the place.
The great bonus we had was that we knew we would be returning here after our stint in China so anything we didn't have time for initially could be stored for later. We spent our 1 full day there doing the tourist beat, up The Peak for the phenominal views of the harbour, the avenue of stars for the obligitory cheesy snaps, a trip on the star ferry and lets not forget that we were meeting with Sandra before sailing over to China the next day.
CHINA
ShunDe
We woke bright and early the next morning in order to meet with Sandra and catch the 8.30am ferry to ShunDe, China side.
We were met at the ferry port by Sandra's translator (Billy), who thought that Sandra had just picked 2 backpacking strays up on the ferry & wondered where we needed to be dropped off! After arriving at Sandras apartment we instantly knew that our dream of relaxtion and sleep catch up was surely about to be realised. Our accomodation in Shunde, The Hotel Sandra, could be described as 'adequate'and we felt sure that we'd be able to struggle through with cable TV, hot showers, a fridge, swimming pool, air conditioning & an actual mattress on the bed as best we could. This travelling lark is 'tough'!
As it turned out, as Sandra works roughly 23 hours a day, we had the perfect opportunity to sleep and sleep we did like sleeping logs from the sleepy river in sleeptown. We were now ready for the weekend.
Xiamen
We had planned to travel early Saturday morning to the sea-side town of Xiamen just up the east-coast, with this in mind, it was perhaps a bad idea to stay out boozing untill 3am......and Sandra warned us the Vodka was dodgy!
We were met on arrival by the ever charming, helpful and crazy Kildare who took it as his personal mission to make Xiamen fun fun fun. It's so much easier having a local with you when ordering food and thankfully no further bird claws appeared in any soup or hotpot. Basically virtually nobody speaks English in China, even the words airport, internet and can you believe it The Great Wall of China are not understood at all. So now, armed with Kildare we were confident in trying all of the local cuisines, which in a nutshell consisted of; lots of fresh fish (picked whilst live from fish tanks), shell fish, seafood, oxtail, snails, wings, heads, feet, necks, tongues, eyes, trotters & snouts. The Chinese really do eat EVERYTHING, although the live beetles, scorpions, silk worm pupae & frogs were perhaps a little too challenging for our pallets.
Whilst in Xiamen we were treated to our first massage experience, which probably is up there with one of the funniest experiences of our trip, if not our lives. Dan couldn't sit still in fits of giggles as he couldn't bear the tickling, I'm sure the lady in charge of his feet had never seen toes of that length in all her professional years. The laughter of the 4 of us (us, Sandra & Kildare) was reminiscent of 4 children naughtily giggling at school. A memorable experience & something that we will probably definitely be participating in again.
The next day after brekkie, we all went over to the beach for a wonderful Sunday morning swim in the South China sea before then heading over to the neigbouring island of Gulangyu to do the tourist thing.
We had such a great weekend, but we knew that the time was approaching when the rucksacks needed to be re-packed and our travelling shoes relaced, we were off to Beijing first thing the next morning.
Beijing
Contrary to the warblings of Katie Melua, there are in fact 9 million and 7 bicycles in Beijing, as counted personally by Mr D Raw.
We got to the nations capital and landed ourselves a cracking room right on the main street, a stones throw from all the sights and main shopping districts. Beijing instantly feels like a capital, although rumours that taxi drivers have been learning english in anticipation for the 2008 Olympic games seems somewhat off the mark and the poor guy who picked us up at the airport also managed to get himself a traffic fine from a mean looking policeman. We quickly paid up and legged it afraid of saying the wrong thing to a communist traffic policeman who quite unecessarily had a gun!?
As our time in Beijing was limited, we just focused on the main touristy things, namely, Ti'aanamen Square, The Forbidden City & The Great Wall. The Square was the scene of the embarrasingly recent 1989 massacre of thousands of student protesters & to us it seemed quite eery. Quite inappropriate that so many families stand smiling for photo's underneath the ominous portrait of chairman Mao after so many innocents died here. This aside, its still something worth coming to see and The Forbidden City (the ancient former residence of past ruling dynasties, only recently opened up to the public) was just awesome.
The obvious highlight of Beijing though, was our trip to see The Great Wall of China and we can both say, hand on heart, that it truly is GREAT. The trip was fab & not just for the obvious reasons. As we had missed the bus to get us up to Badaling where a section of the wall is open, we instead shared a taxi for the 90km trip with a very strange boy. We initially deduced that he was retarded, but realised after 20 minutes en route, that he was actually in fact, an American. His name was Parker for Goodness sake. (Mark D, the T-shirt we bought you in jest, he actually purchased and tried on before wearing it on his ascent of the wall - you get the jist).
The wall itself was an incredibly gruelling climb up about roughly a million steps at an incline of 85 degrees! Do not be fooled by the old ladies and children waving from 500ft up, I think people have actually died on day trips before....well LJ nearly did anyway.
Again, another city conquered and good times all round.
Shanghai
The business centre of China and it seemed on first arrival that possibly the coolest as well. If not quite Hong Kong, it's getting there.
Basically, the Chinese government grant certain regions and cities special economic powers and allow them to flourish in capitalism - Shanghai is the biggest. The people here are westernised, the skyline is fantastic and the buildings which date back to the 19th century mimic those of 1920's Manhattan and most unusually, Liverpool! An all round good feeling city, if a little expensive. It was whilst in Shanghai, that we realised that we'd under budgeted by 100% for China.
There's no sights as such, but we took full advantage of the great cheap shopping for some much needed clothing replensishments, we enjoyed drinks & food & generally just enjoyed being us with our bloody fantastic lives.
For a special treat one night, we dolled ourselves up in our new clobber and headed for the Cloud 9 bar on the 87th floor of the Grand Hyatt hotel, which boasts the best views of the skyline from the tallest building in the city.
Anyone who knows Dan, will not be surprised to hear that he was sh*tting his pants as the lift sped up the floors (he was even scared on Sandras 12th floor balcony so at 87 floors up he had bob hope). Ultimately though, disaster as we weren't allowed in wearing the flip flops!!!
Ah well, money saved we thought, we'll head to the 'world famous' Peace Hotel across the river to check out the equally 'world famous' Peace Jazz Band instead. 2 drinks & 20 quid each later we'd endured all we could from the said band and turned in for the night.
After 5 days of travelling the country in a whistle stop fashion, we head back pennyless to Shunde ready for another crazy Saturday night with Sandra and the Jacks Bar crew.
Return to ShunDe
As promised we arrived back ready for the weekend and ready for another night of singing, dancing & drinking at the quite charming Jacks Bar.
Sandra is the local celebrity here and even the band stop singing when she arrives to say hello. Now we use the word 'band' loosley here & have to point out that it's only through copious amounts of hard licquor that you really start to apprecaite them.
We really relaxed again back at Sandras and were made to feel so welcome and at home that we were reluctant to pack up again and leave. But Hong Kong was calling again and ultimately so was Tokyo. Hey-ho I suppose we can battle on.
Return to Hong Kong
It may seem sad, but on our arrival back in Hong Kong, we ditched the rucksacks & we headed straight to the cinema for the eargerly awaited pant wetting screening of Superman Returns. This wasn't before a 'quick' drink in The Hard Rock Cafe who had Tetleys on tap for the bargain price of 6 quid a pint! We'll get the hang off this budget lark soon enough. The film's excellent by the way.
We also had a full day on Shek-O beach, this was great and our last relax before our hectic week in the money sucking metropolis that is Tokyo, Japan.
We would both just like to whole heartedly thank Sandra for her wonderful hospitality and who without, China would not have been possible. Missing you already, your buddies LJ & dan x
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