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Hong Kong and On
Our travels through a small part of china began with the flight into Shenzen, the industrial scale of which left me speechless as we flew over one big industrial site for about the last 15 minutes of the flight. This is the place where people live in the factories andit is the richest part of china, it is a little imposing to say the least but when you see the difference between the countryside way of life and the cities you can understand young peoples wish to get to the cities as they are effectively in different centuries.
Anyway, we made our way to Hong Kong and stayed with our friends James (Shaggy) and Laura who very kindly housed us and let us turn their house into a laundry for about 3 days as we attempted to remove 'odour de Borneo jungle' from our clothes and persons.
Hong Kong is a bit of a shock after Borneo as it is ultra modern and consumerism is almost a religion. I have never seen as many designer shops in my life, way more than Milan and every office building appears to have a designer mall in the ground and first floors, Gucci and Dior Darling! Also not a good place to go if you are a girl and don't want to feel fat as the people are all tiny. For me it was great as having been of average height in the UK, suddenly I was a giant!
From Hong Kong we took an evening and over night train into Guilin which is among the karst limestone landscape used in so many films. Crossing the landscape by train with blues on the ipod though a bit corny was great fun. After a day here we left for Yangshou for which we got there by public bus (we were the only westerners) and Bamboo raft down the Lee river which was truly stunning. Yangshou is a bit touristy (ie they have cormorant fishing shows just for the tourists nowadays and there is a MacDonald's) but you can cycle away from that in about 10 minutes to be among the farmers and rice fields at which point people start staring at the strange white giants but are all very friendly though enterprising. One lady tried to charge us 10 Yuan for a photo we had taken in the countryside of herbuffalo, as I liked the amount of front it took I gave it to her!! From here we headed back through Guilin and on via public bus towards Longsheng and the Longi rice terraces. The bus journey was a little extreme due to landslides which are very common here as the Chinese don't believe in slope stability engineering, all you need is a digger permanently near the bits that slip. We actually drove past one which had recently slipped and with a few boulders still coming at the bus is was all a bit Indiana Jones. Still here though so no harm done….
We abandoned that bus in the middle of nowhere whilst trying to get to Ping'an in the rice terraces. Instead we were convinced by a lady with a guesthouseto go to DahZai on the basis that "Dahzai beautiful' and Kirsty's crack negotiating skills of never deciding anything had yet again had the lady dropping the price. Dahzai had only one other western couple in it (Mercia and Juliet from Paris) whom we befriended and walked with to Ping'an the following day. Fair to say without them we would have struggled as we took no guide and the route was not obvious and as they both had passable mandarin we made it there 6 hours later. The following day Kirst and I were on our own and as such, got lost at which point I threw my toys out a bit due to getting into what my family would refer to as a 'forge a path through the gorse' moment but with cobwebs on an abandoned track in the middle of nowhere. Later, having removed the cobwebs, spiders and replaced the sense of humour, amazingly a few verses of Molly Malone on a Chinese tour bus got us a free 4 hour bus trip back to Guilin, (clearly the Chinese have a great ear for music!).
One train, two busses and a very dodgy home made motor trike later we have made it to Hanoi in Vietnam, a city we both love immediately. Crossing the street requires a complete disregard for your own well being but the sights of the city and the smell of French patisseries more than make up for it. The one down side is that the Man united shirts, absent from the world in China are back…..
Love to all, until the next time
Ian and Kirsty
- comments
Mum/Julia Great to hear from you both again, and amazing photos - I think we might be all amazed out by November, here in UK!! I can quite see why the buffalow lady needed a reward...I notice the 'jewelery' collection is growing, soon you'll need to send some home & to leave room for more...LoL to you both.XX
Mum Wow, the rice terraces are truly amazing. Thanks for the fabulous selection of photos. I was happy to enjoy the jungle without having to endure the leeches, but now I'm beginning to feel we're all missing out! Keep the pics coming, and have a great time.
Verity and Chris Sounds like an amazing trip so far..bamboo rafting sounds fun, fun,fun!! Brillant pics :) xx
Jac Hi my lovelies, really enjoying the journal and spectacular photos. Missing you guys, thanks for the pc the kids loved it. They both love looking at the globe and working out where you are. Xxxx