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Its been a while since me and matt have updated the blog so i promise i will try not to go on to much...ok you all know what i'm like i babble.
So 24 hour train journey from Hangzhou to Yangzhou, we survived on our emergency supply of cheetos (thanks Kath,) orios and chips ahoy cookies! To scared to eat anything else, for fear of having to use a squatter on a train! although to be fair there were the cleanest and nicest squatter toilets we have come across on a train...anyhoo.
We get to Yangzhou and make our way to our hostel 'Showbiz Inn' dump our bags and go straight to the roof top bar, right in the middle of the mountains, breathtaking. Plus every night you got a beer voucher for 50p a bottle, between 8 and 9 and then its was 1 pound 50 for two bottles after that!
Yangzhou is by a mile mine and Matt's favourite place in China so far, it is exactly what we pictured and imagined China to be like.
We stayed there for a week and half in the end, we went Kayaking for 4 and a half hrs down the Li River with Tom and Emma whose birthday it was. Half way down a woman starts shouting at us from across the river, asking if we want a drink from her boat...four bottles of beer bought one for each of us and then we continued to kayaking to a town called Puyi. The views were amazing just the four of us kayaking down the river in-between the mountains saying hello to people we came across on random boats going past, pure bliss. (just like the above picture!)
After the long afternoon we showered,shat and shaved in preparation for a meal for Emma's birthday as we had managed to find a curry house on the middle of china, as typical brits abroad we piled in (16 of us in total) filling the place! Even though we all ordered different curries, they all came out looking like the exact same type of brown curry but it was nice. Later on we all went to Monkey Janes for some drinks and then went down near the river to let off a massive firecrackers cake that Nick,Cara,Amanda,Al and Flo had bought Emma for her birthday.
We went on a bike ride with Paul, and Lei to Moon Hill (called moon hill cause of the half moon shaped that in the top of the mountain.) We climbed up i'm not kidding there was about 3,000 steps up to the moon part. We took some pictures and then a old chinese woman told us about a trek that said 'no pedestrians allowed.' She told us we could go up the path and it would take us right up to the top of the mountain..when in China!
We started the climbed about another 10 minutes, halfway there Matt n Paul pulled a mooney on moon hill! (Picture to follow!) When we got right on top of the mountain you could see for miles around as it was such a clear day.
Most of our nights were spent in Monkey Jane's the home of 'Beer Pong!' (cant wait to teach it to you all when i'm back!) Winner stays on and if you win 6 times in a row you get Beer Pong Champion T-Shirt. Matt and Flo won 9 times in a row and became the new champions!! plus got their free t-shirts (well i got matts he he)
We tried snake biajo which is a chinese spirit that is 56% and it was in a jar with 4 or 5 snakes and had been there for about 3 years fermenting! lethal!! yet strangely nice.
This is when after a 5 week mini adventure with Paul and Tom (no pun intended Paul!) we sadly had to part ways as they heading for Vietnam. We miss them loads and had so much fun with them travelling China and we cant wait to meet up with them again in Singapore.
Me and Matt moved from the Showbiz Inn to the another hostel in Yangzhou called 'The Culture House.' This hostel was run by Wei and his family and it was like a live in experience with a chinese family. All the food was included in the price and cooked by Wei's wife, who is an amazing cook the stuffed chilli peppers were soo good!
At Wei's me and Matt met Helen and a belgium couple we learnt how to do Tai Chi at 8am (Matt didnt make it out of bed in time) and then that night Wei taught us all how to do traditional Chinese Calligraphy.
While at Wei's me, Matt and Helen went for another bike ride this time we did about 14km through little villages and past rice paddies. Every person we went past said hello to us, kids were chasing us shouting hello and offering us Quail eggs to eat, we saw water bisons, fields of mandarin oranges that we picked. It was so much fun i could of done it all day, every day!
We had a bit of a rest at Wei's after to much beer pong and after 5 days made our way to Guilin for two nights to see the pagodas, before are next part of the trip and a bus trip from Guilin to Guanzhou. Where we are meeting up with Nick and Cara and also seeing John that we met in Beijing.
Speak to you all soon xxxx
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