Tiger Leaping Gorge

Couldn’t stay in Lijiang too long as we wanted to do this two day hike along the Himalayas called Tiger Leaping Gorge.  I’ve been excited about this since I read about it months ago so I was really keen but disaster strikes! The morning of leaving for the hike I get hit with a horrible stomach bug half way to the gorge, not nice at all. Anyway I foolishly decided to try the hike . . . . . 20 mins in and I could barely move, I had absolutely zero energy. But luckily there was a little ray of sunshine following me – a little palomino pony called Little Boy! I hired the pony to take me to the highest part of the trail, it was the best decision I ever made there was no way I could continue without him!

 

The views were so worth it! It was absolutely beautiful, the gorge itself is deeper than the Grand Canyon and the surrounding mountains were as high as Everest base camp. We climbed up to just shy of 3000m, Ben did amazingly but it was fair to say we were both exhausted after the first day and couldn’t wait to get to the guest house half way!

 

I didn’t feel much better the second day but we had to continue on to finish the trek. It wasn’t as difficult as the first day thankfully so I could do it without too much hassle, on the second part of the trek there were loads of waterfalls, it was a really beautiful day.

 The trek was the last thing we were doing in China so after we just took a couple of days to get down the mountains to a city called Kunming where we had flights booked to go to Hanoi, Vietnam. The last few days were cool, all I did really was try to recover from my illness, which sucked but I was really looking forward to starting a new country. I will miss China... just not their rude smelly men who spit all the time!

Lijiang and Disneylandified China!

After a few days chilling in Dali we moved on up the mountains to a little town called Lijiang. We were not quite as fortunate with the bus ride up, 5 hours on a mini bus crammed with spitting, smoking Chinese men, it was horrible, the only thing that was missing from the scene was a bunch of chickens. Lijiang was a really cool little town, cobbled streets, arched bridges and little canals everywhere, reminded me a lot of Venice but with Chinese architecture.

Lijiang has some really beautiful surroundings, we went to a lake called the Black Dragon Pool where you can see the mountains that mark the beginning of the Himalayas. We spent some time wondering around the area but then had to get back to ‘Mamas’ for dinner! We were staying in this crazy guest house with a Naxi Mama running the place, she was so hectic and for some strange reason was always shoving bananas at us!!!

Dali and the start of the Yunnan

Our first major stop in the Yunnan was a town called Dali, took a while to get there – a 20 hour train from Chengdu to Kunming, stay over night in Kunming then a 5 hour bus ride up to Dali. But it was worth the fuss, our hostel was the best yet – The Dali Hump, it is ran by a community of artists and musicians and all the rooms had different murals painted in them and in the bar there was a full drum kit (Ben was very excited when he saw this) and guitars etc for the guests to jam with. 

 The first night we met a Belgian guy called Julian who could play the guitar so Ben and him formed a drunken band, they were actually really good, some people thought we’d been traveling together and they were in a proper band, funny. The jam session was a bit messy towards the end as a certain drummer was absolutely smashed – one too many long island iced teas, getting him to bed was interesting!

 The next couple of days we spent time looking around Dali, it’s a really amazing town really authentic Chinese architecture but with a reggae/rasta vibe to the town. We did this 10km hike in the mountains above Dali, it was pretty easy but really beautiful. 

 There was a BBQ in the hostel that night with some pretty amazing food, loads of different meats, it was heaven after 4 weeks in China with endless rice! They had a jam session after the BBQ for people to come up and play etc, unfortunately for us there were some French Canadians staying who thought they were gods gift to music, my my they were wrong! The same terrible 6 songs over and over again, and to top it off the guitarist was one of those tools who wore sunglasses the whole time even in the dark, he looked like a white Stevie Wonder!

Panda Watch in Chengdu

So off we went to Chengdu in the Sichuan Provence via another overnight train, we are starting to feel at home on them now! The train stopped though the night in the ass-end of nowhere, all the buildings looked deserted – Thankfully the train kept going and we didn’t get abandoned in murderville!

Our hostel in Chengdu was really cool, Sims Cozy Garden Hostel, it had the largest garden in the city centre – compared to gardens in the UK it was average sized. The main reason we traveled to Chengdu was to visit the Giant Panda Research Base where they are trying to make the pandas randy and actually get off their behinds and mate. They had a really successful year this year with 18 cubs born, when we were looking around the centre there were some babies in the nursery and they are the cutest things I have ever seen!!! They are so fluffy and they don’t have the use of their back legs yet so they just drag themselves along on their bellies, cute cute cute!

The adult pandas were amazing too, we went to the centre early in the morning so we could catch them at their most ‘active’ time of day, when I say active I mean sat around eating (this is as active as pandas ever get!). We saw loads of adult pandas and I think we took about 100 pics of pandas in different positions – Panda watch, the mood is tense!

We didn’t stop in Chengdu for very long, we wanted to get down south to the Yunnan Province to experience a more rural side of China.

Xi'an and the Terracotta Warriors

After Beijing we traveled to China’s ancient capital Xi’an, this is where they have found the Terracotta Warriors and marks the end of the ‘Silk Road’ from all the way in far western China. Xi’an has a really great vibe to the city and was surrounded by this massive wall, well you know the Chinese and their walls! Our hostel was really cool, it had a massive bar in the basement with cheap cocktails, met some great people in this hostel, a really good couple of days here.

We spent our one full day in Xi’an at the Terracotta Warriors tomb, another really amazing day – it’s the kind of sight that you really have to see to believe. They have uncovered thousands of warriors and they are all unique, there are archers, generals, horses, and chariots. By looking at the statues you can find out how important the warrior was; if the statue had a fat belly or pointy shoes then that meant he was very important. All the faces are different too, as you look down the rows of the tomb you can see that the faces are all individual, maybe with a mustache or with big eyebrows, it was really amazing. Once again really crazy to think that someone actually came up with the idea of building this army – the Chinese definitely don’t do things by halves!!!

 The famous pit 1 - thousands of warriors were found in this site alone

Beijing

Beijing was absolutely amazing!!! We spent 7 nights in Beijing and we didn’t stop the whole time. There are so many things to see and do, the Forbidden City is such an epic sight. It is absolutely massive and opposite the front gates is Tianamen Square, dominating the centre of Beijing.

We took a whole day to look around the Forbidden City, it was a labyrinth of never ending corridors and palaces. The emperors lived in such splendor and with 1000s of concubines (women who the Emperor could ‘call upon’ whenever he wished) – in those days the Emperor was the only fertile man in the Forbidden City, all the other men (guards and cooks etc) called Eunuchs had there ‘manhood’ removed so that if a girl fell pregnant in the Forbidden City the child would have to be the Emperors – MENTAL!!!!

We also walked up to the hill above the Forbidden City to see the view from above, the whole site is absolutely massive, it was really worth walking up to see the view:

The next day we visited the Summer Palace – this is where the imperial family came to escape the summer heat in the Forbidden City. It is set over massive grounds with a huge lake in the middle, we went on quite a foggy day which was a little shame but we had a great day there, the temples and pagodas were beautiful.

 

There is so much to do in Beijing we could have stayed for longer, we visited the zoo, which was really cool lots of animals etc but not up to western zoo standard – the pandas were really grubby and scratched constantly and the Siberian tigers they had there looked less then impressed with their living conditions. We also went on bike rides around the old ally ways or ‘Hutongs’ to see the old Beijing and walked around the Temple of Heaven park where loads of Chinese people get together in their spare time and dance and sing, play cards and dominoes. The city has a really rich culture and traditions, it’s really nice to amble around and watch them.

The Great Wall – this was one the best days I’ve ever had, the sight of the Great Wall is absolutely breathtaking, the sheer immensity of the construction is overwhelming and to think they did it all without fancy excavators and cranes – the emperor really was crazy!!! There are loads of sections of the wall you can visit we did a tour called ‘the ancient to secret wall’ the first two watch towers were reconstructed to show what it would have looked like all those years ago but after those two towers it was all original wall, Ben and I were scrambling up it at one stage, it’s really steep in places! We had such a great day and the weather was great for us so we could see the wall snake off in to the distance for miles – it is definitely one of our recommendations to do in the world!

The other place where we spent a lot of time in Beijing was the markets!!! They are absolutely amazing just 1000s of bags, electronics, watches, clothes. We were very over excited when we first walked in them! I did get a bit out of control but as always Ben stopped me when I was getting over excited – damn! The food was another good thing about Beijing, we had real Peking Duck and it was sooooo yum. The first place we went to I wasn’t so amused with, it was a horrible place and I saw a ruddy rat run though the restaurant, lovely. We also went to a really nice place to try it again and it was exceptional, so much nicer than crispy duck pancakes in the UK and you got loads of it!

 

This was one of the other culinary options!

Shanghai

On to our next city Shanghai, we met a great Chinese couple on the train who suggested loads of amazing things for us to do; it was so helpful because we didn’t really have a clue and they sorted out our train tickets to Beijing for us, result.

Shanghai yet again has an amazing skyline, in the daytime though it is unfortunately hindered by an almighty cloud of smog (and you Londoners thought you had it bad)! You can see it better at night, Ben and I took a really nice long stroll down ‘the bund’ on our first evening.

 The day time smog is unbelievable!

We took a little excursion whilst in Shanghai to a smaller city called Suzhou to go and see the world famous gardens. They were traditional Chinese gardens and were really lovely but other than the gardens in Suzhou, there really wasn’t much else to do! We did take a tuk tuk ride of death though that was really fun – they don’t take any prisoners on the roads here!

We seemed to time our trip to Shanghai really well as we were there whilst the ‘World Expo 2010’ was on; it’s basically a world fair with loads of countries setting up expo stands to try and boost tourism. It was absolutely mad in there though it was so busy almost a million people were there the day we were. Ben and I felt like parts of the exposition at times, loads of Chinese people were taking our pictures – we felt like right celebrities! The UK pavilion was really good and we got a queue jump in there because we are British – wow! The whole expo was a really great sight though, the Chinese pavilion was outstanding, these expo stalls must cost millions to make, it’s really insane!

 China Pavilion

UK Pavilion

The rest of the time in Shanghai we were just sight seeing around the city, we went up the tallest building – supposedly the worlds highest observation deck??? Our train ride to Beijing was not quite so fortunate though we officially had the worlds worst snorer in our cabin, Benny got about an hours sleep – luckily I had my iPod!!!

Hong Kong

After an exhausting 26 hour journey we finally arrived in Hong Kong – via a rather wonderful 12 hour stop off in Delhi, serves us right for booking the cheapest way to HK as possible!!!

The long journey was well worth it though, for one Starbucks was cheaper than at home so I got started on the vanilla lattes straight away but mainly because Hong Kong is an amazing city. Daniel (Ben’s Brother) came to meet us at the airport which was so nice and we headed to his and Steph’s amazing pad in an area of HK called Kowloon – it was like being in a 5 star resort with swimming pools and concierge service, our little bit of luxury before we started slumming it in Asian hostels!

We did so much in Hong Kong, even though we were only there for a week. We caught the tram up to Victoria Peak to catch a glimpse of the notorious skyline and wow what a sight the city is! Best skyline I have ever seen, I don’t think many in the world can rival it either.

One day all four of us (Dan, Steph, Ben and I) went to Disneyland – it is quite a small park but we had an amazing day, went on every single ride and saw all the shows, which I loved.

The next day we all took a trip to see the Giant Buddha out on Lantau Island and the small and extremely smelly fishing village of Tai O. The tour guide compared the village to Italy’s Venice, obviously he had never been, or in fact seen pictures! The Giant Buddha was a great site and despite the immense heat we managed it up to the top for some good old photo opps!

We also met up with my friends from Uni that night, Winnie and Dan. They took us to this really interesting restaurant in an apartment – it was like a secret restaurant and the food was great, 10 courses of vegetarian dishes although some of the food did look, taste and feel suspiciously like meat!

Ben and I managed to fit in another theme park too – Ocean Park. There were pandas and dolphins and rollercoaster’s, a really good day but it was sooooo hot and there was nowhere to escape the heat.

We had a great time scoping out the markets of Hong Kong too, they are amazing. The fake items are so so so convincing, they must be made by the same people or something?

Bought way too much though and Ben couldn’t escape the lure of the watches, personally for me I was loving the tat, random Chinese crap but I ruddy love it!!!