Sanya, Take 2.

I had planned to take Sar to Sanya before Lydia invited me down the first time and despite my previous theft experience I was looking forward to going back.  After rain on the mainland we were hopeful for sun.

Sadly, this time there would be little sun.  Fortunately it was still warm, our hostel owner, Chris, was great, and we met these guys.

James and Brian were the first Americans I’ve met travelling who I’ve really got on with.  They totally broke my stereotype.  We spent the first few Sanya days hardly moving from the rooftop terrace of our hostel (Sanya Backpackers), playing cards and just generally having a laugh.

In the evenings we would go to Dolphin, our favourite place ever.  Dolphin was a sports bar that served amazing Western food, had a pool table and basically provided us with something to do/eat at all times of day.  Here we are just after brunch.

We met a few more Americans in Dolphin and after drinks we would head down to the beach bar, where a very talented Filipino band played every night.  When the band finished we would hang out on the beach, setting off fireworks that Chinese men bought us, and running around with sparklers.

It was the perfect way to spend nights on a tropical island.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten that Sanya has a dark side; namely, that of petty theft.  So it was a nasty surprise when I was robbed again, this time of my whole bag.  Goodbye purse no.2, phone, keys, hoody and, tragedy of tragedies, camera.  It was actually Lydia’s camera, which she had lent me after I broke my camera in Sanya the first time around, and it had all my photos on from a whole month of travelling.  Not good.

Oh Sanya.  Truly ours is the epitome of a love-hate relationship.

I have been able to (painstakingly) recreate my photographic memories from 10 different people’s cameras; enough for the last 5 blog entries at least!  But, needless to say, it was very upsetting at the time.  However, after initial distress and a thwarted attempt to drown myself in the sea, I came to terms with my loss, and got on with enjoying the holiday.  Again.

One day we went to the beach, even though it was about to rain, to show the guys the nudist colony.  We didn’t get too close.  In the far background of this picture are a lot of very dark, very naked Chinese men.

When the boys left we were extremely upset.  Fortunately, the next day the sun came out.  We spent most of it on the beach.

Drinking coconut water…

Sitting around with our other American friends...

Singing the Dambusters theme tune...

And pretending to be mermaids/dead bodies washed up on the rocks.

We also went scuba diving.

We had a very busy time in Sanya.

One evening we went out for sushi with a couple of girls from Brazil and Colombia.  The sushi was good, but the chairs at the entrance to the restaurant were better.

The day James and Brian left, our old friends Rik and Susan turned up!  Here we all are with Chris at the hostel.

On our last night, Chris took a group of us out for a seafood dinner.  In Sanya the streets are basically lined with seafood restaurants, where all the fish and other creatures swim around in tanks stacked up outside.  You choose which fish you want.  Then they throw the fish on the floor in a bag and smack the bag on the floor until the fish is dead.

It was a little traumatic.  But the food was delicious.

We then went back to the beach bar for the last time.

The next day Sar had to leave in the morning to catch a flight to Hong Kong and then back home.  Chris has a couple of big maps on the wall and gets all his guests to put a pin in to show where they're from.  Here we are trying to guess where Stoke is...

I was very sad to see Sar go and spent the day moping around until Harman, a Canadian policeman staying at the hostel took me out for lunch.  And then gave me $100.

I tried to refuse it, but he said I'd had a lot of bad luck recently and I should see it in a 'Pay it Forward' light.  Someone had done him a favour in Malaysia, he was doing something nice for me now and I would be able to help someone out in the future.  In the end he didn't give me a choice and, as it turns out, I needed the cash.   I can't get another bank card until next week, so Harman's money allowed me to get back to Pingxiang, get a new phone and is currently allowing me to eat.  So that worked out well.

Harman's kindness broke the trend of unfortunate things happening in China and me wishing I wasn't here.  But I still didn't want to go back to work.  When Chris offered me a job at the hostel I was extremely tempted.  However, due to my integrity, and a clause in my contract that makes me liable to pay up to $9000 if I breach it, I returned to Pingxiang last weekend.

Apart from the gaping hole in my heart from Sar's absence, it's actually nice to be back now.  I enjoy not living out of a rucksack.  And I'm too much of a celebrity here for people to try to rob me.  Pingxiang has its perks after all.

Guilin to Yangshuo

After a quick stop in Guangzhou we flew to Guilin.  Guilin is a Chinese tourist hot spot, home to the Li River and famous for an eight hundred year old inscription that boasts ‘Guilin’s Scenery is the Best Under Heaven’.  We weren’t super impressed with Guilin itself though, because we could tell the scenery was very beautiful but there was this big city in the way.

Still, we had some fun.  Sar wanted to try hot pot, so we went to a hot pot restaurant for lunch.  Unfortunately, the menu was entirely in Chinese and nobody spoke any English.  Miraculously, with a bit of Chinese and some educated guesswork (ticking random boxes) I actually managed to get us a decent meal.  

Apart from the 2 cups of ice.  But I maintain that a cup of ice with hot pot is just good sense.

We visited Jingjiang Princes Palace, which Sar could not pronounce.  It was a mini walled city, with palace buildings, lanterns and trees.

Here are 2 trees hugging.

We also climbed 306 steps to the top of a steep hill known as Duxiu Feng to get some views over the city.  It was a random sharp pinnacle that just rose out of the ground seemingly from nowhere, because the land all around it was flat.  There were many legends about how and why the hill was important, but I can’t remember any of them.

We only stayed the one night in Guilin, memorable for a disastrous experience at Pizza Hut where they tried to convince us that a meat pizza always comes with fish sauce.  The less said about that the better.

In the morning we took a cruise to Yangshuo.

A cruise on the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo is supposedly the highlight of any trip to southern China, if not to China as a whole.  The scenery was stunning.  There’s not really any other way to say it.

The Li River winds through Karst hills, which have the most weird and wonderful shapes.  I googled them to find out how such interesting shapes form, but geography was never my strong point and I got confused.  Let’s call it magic.  Our helpful guide, Cherry, informed us that the beauty of the Li River scenery was down to 10% information, 30% observation and 60% imagination.  We spent some of the cruise trying to imagine what each hill looked like, but they mostly all looked the same to us.  So I guess we missed out.

We managed to get the last day of ‘good’ weather before a cold front moved over the region, so were able to stand outside for a lot of the 4-hour cruise.  It was quite breezy though.

We spent the cruise with Rik and Susan, an American couple who had taken the same bus as us from the Guilin hostel to the boat, and were headed to the same hostel in Yangshuo.  They were very friendly.  Here we are with Susan.

I had heard only the best things about Yangshuo and we weren’t disappointed.  Unlike Guilin, the scenery wasn’t obstructed by skyscrapers; Yangshuo was basically just a couple of roads and a lot of tourist stalls.  Wherever you looked you could see the mountains and though the centre of town certainly catered to tourists it only took 5 minutes to get out into the countryside.

We stayed 3 nights in Yangshuo and really enjoyed our time there.  We had done 4 cities in 4 days so definitely appreciated stopping somewhere for a little while.  The weather wasn’t great, but the rain and mist actually added to the charm of the hills.  One day we went for a wander through the countryside.

Apart from that, we didn’t really do anything.  Our hostel had amazing breakfasts, freshly baked banana bread and DVD players in the rooms.  We ventured out when necessary, for food, massages and shopping.  I couldn't stop buying earrings and Sar got a Chinese flute from this guy.

At night, the hills around the town were lit up and everything reflected in the water; it was, perhaps, too pretty to capture on camera.

I went for a run along the river and also took a bike out one day.  Yangshuo is really small, so it wasn’t a difficult task to get out of town and find the road I wanted to travel south.  Just one left turn and then one right turn.  Very, very simple.

Somehow I ended up 10km north of the town.

I would actually say that Yangshuo is my favourite place in China so far.  If I have the chance in summer I’ll definitely be going back.  It was lovely in the winter rain; I can only imagine how nice it would be in the summer sun.

All too soon it was time to leave Yangshuo and we were both really sad to go.  We caught a bus down to Guilin (on which we had the privilege of watching both a Chinese movie about lethal playing cards and Moonraker) and then got a sleeper train back to Guangzhou.  Just can’t get enough of Guangzhou.

My reason for using Guangzhou as a transit base was that it has really cheap domestic flights.  I’m not sure why, but it does.  Unfortunately, we were flying out in the evening and our train arrived at 6.30am.  Also, it was raining.  There weren’t a lot of options, so we chose to go and hang out in the riverside hostel for the day.  I think I’d been there enough for the staff not to suspect we weren’t guests, or care that we spent the whole day dozing on the sofas.  Not the most exciting of days, but it was much needed rest and by the evening we were very, very ready to get to Sanya…

Hong Kong

The most important thing to say about Hong Kong is that Sar was my favourite visitor, and is possibly my favourite person in the whole world.  And though I did ask her for blog input the statement still stands.

I caught a bus down from Guangzhou directly to HK airport to meet Sar and we began our adventures.

First stop was Kowloon and our accommodation for the weekend – the mighty Chungking Mansions, stopping point of all budget travelers to the city.  Chungking is a 16 (or so) storey building crammed with guesthouses, food stalls and really good Indian restaurants.  There were supposedly 5 ‘blocks’ and we were in block E, which all the people hanging around outside trying to sell us things seemed to know.  Spooky.

Chungking is a notorious hole but we were pleasantly surprised by our room at ‘Maple Leaf Guesthouse’.  It was very clean and definitely comfortable enough for a couple of nights.  Also, it was enormous.

Just check out the size of that room.  There was even a bathroom as well, which consisted of a shower attachment over a toilet, and a sink.  Personally I think we were spoilt for space.

The first evening we went for a stroll along the promenade to get the classic views across Victoria Harbour of the skyscraper lights from Hong Kong central.  We went along the Avenue of Stars, a tribute to the Hong Kong film industry, and stopped for a drink in Starbucks.

The next day we decided to explore the city.  Hong Kong is a very expensive place but thanks to my purse having been stolen and Sarah forgetting to bring hers every time we left our room, we actually spent very little money that day.  This financial anomaly would not be repeated, but it was nice to start off on the right foot.  In the morning we had dim sum, a typical Cantonese breakfast.

We took the Star Ferry over from Kowloon to HK Central.

Then navigated our way through the walkways to reach the Mid-Level Escalators.
 
They were basically just escalators.  But outdoor ones, that took you up the hill to various residential areas.  In the mornings they run downhill for people to get to work and the rest of the day they run uphill.  Useful.

Hong Kong is not a big city, but I didn’t think it felt crowded.  It’s well designed and space is utilised to its full potential by subways underground and walkways above.  And shops are basically built on top of each other.

After a couple more trips on the ferry we made our way to Victoria Peak with the aim of being at the top for dusk and sunset.  The best way to get to the top of The Peak is by tram, but when we arrived at the tram queue it was about 4 hours long.  So we joined up with a couple of Australian boys who were hanging around and shared a taxi to the top.

Views from The Peak, over Central and Victoria Harbour, were amazing.  The guys told us that the past week or so had been quite foggy so we were very lucky to have the weather we did.  After accidentally ditching the guys, Sar and I went up to the top of a shopping plaza to watch as the sun went down and the city lights gradually came on.

It was all very beautiful.  Then we went to McDonalds.

The next day was our last day in Hong Kong, so we had to check out of Chungking.  John Smith, our happy Chinese guesthouse owner, wasn’t awake yet, so we also had to carry our bags everywhere.  We felt it added a nice gap year effect.

We decided to visit Lantau, the biggest and best of the Outlying Islands.  After metro-ing to Tung Chung, at the foot of the Ngong Ping Plateau, we got in the queue for tickets on the Ngong Ping 360 cable car.  About 2 hours later we got in the cable car.  Queues in Hong Kong are hefty.

It was all worth it though.  The cable car had a glass floor and panoramic views of Lantau’s coast, the ocean, and Hong Kong airport.  I was pretty excited about the airport.  Sar wasn’t.

At the top of the mountain and up a fair few steps was the Tian Tan Buddha, better known as the Big Buddha.  It was big.

Sar and I were enlightened by Big Buddha.  We had to be enlightened pretty quickly, because we needed to get back down the mountain, have lunch and be on a bus by 3pm, but there was enlightenment nonetheless.  Sar realised that she could climb a lot of steps with her rucksack, and I realised that Sar is probably the best person ever.

We briefly dropped in on the Po Lin Monastery, the largest temple in Hong Kong.

Shame about the crane in the background.

All the mountain scenery was very picturesque though.

After our swift enlightenment, we made our way back down on the cable car (no queue this time), had lunch in a food court, metro-ed, unintentionally scammed a couple of foreigners out of 3 dollars and found the bus station, where we got on a bus back to Guangzhou.

I really enjoyed Hong Kong, mostly because Sarah is amazing, but also because it didn’t really feel like China.  It was just as neon, but somehow seemed more civilised.  Also, everyone spoke English.  Maybe that was it.

Guangzhou and Chinese New Year

Guangzhou, formerly Canton, is mostly just a big city.  But it had its charms.  Chrissy and Jav had planned to be there at the same time so we booked the same hostel and Taz came down to join us as well.  It was so nice to see them after a few weeks apart and our hostel was in a great location on the southern bank of the Pearl River, just across from Shamian Island.  It was also a very good hostel for meeting people, and we made a brilliant group of friends including 2 French girls, Cyrielle and Mathilde, their friend Remi, Dutch Bram and German Torsten.

Apart from making full use of the metro, I didn’t see much of the city.  Far too busy ‘celebrating’ the New Year.  But we did catch the ferry over to Shamian Island quite a few times.  The island was given to European powers as a token section of land that foreigners were permitted to set foot on, back when we weren’t allowed within the city walls.  It’s now a peaceful haven in the midst of a busy city and has a very colonial feel.   

We had some great Thai food and there were some nice views of the city lights from the ferry at night.

Here I am with Cyrielle in Shamian park.  Keeping busy.

On New Year’s Eve we hit the markets of Guangzhou to find rabbit ears.  We searched for a very long time down dodgy back alleys until we found the main shopping street where every other shop sold ears by the bucket.  Though Guangzhou has its fair share of foreigners the four of us Pingxiang laowai attracted more attention with our rabbit ears than we’ve ever had in Pingxiang.  People were literally following us down the street with cameras; one guy even walked backwards right in front of us for about 15 minutes taking photo after photo.  It's worrying, really, how many photos of me there are on random Chinese people's cameras.

In the evening the hostel put on a dumpling party, so we had a go at making dumplings.  All the dumplings made by all the hostel guests were cooked together so the French girls and I made a sneaky Kinder Bueno dumpling which miraculously came back to us and was delicious.

It turned out that New Year’s Eve wasn’t really a very big deal.  We had a good night though.  In the morning we went out in search of dragons.  Somewhat disappointing – the best we could find was a 2-man lion doing the rounds in the shops just around the corner.

And a guy in a chicken suit.

Things got a little more exciting in the evening with the promise of a big fireworks display.  The street outside our hostel was usually fairly deserted but from about 5pm the crowds started gathering, roads were sectioned off and police were everywhere.  It seemed like half the city had turned out for the fireworks so we set up camp near the river to secure a good viewing spot.

We were waiting a while, so we decided to entertain the crowds with a rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody, which was received with tremendous gratitude (at least this is how I interpreted hundreds of disdainful glares and annoyed mutterings).  It worked though; the fireworks started just as we were drawing to a close.

The Chinese certainly know how to do fireworks – there was almost an hour of them, set off from 5 boats lined up in the centre of the river.  It was hard to capture the display on camera but they were spectacular.  It made me think about how mad it is that I’m in China this year, and how exciting.

Apart from trying to evade a crazy lady who lurked in and around the hostel, our time in Guangzhou was very chilled.  Every night we would go to BBQ man, who was a very excellent man.  He BBQ-ed corn like no other.  Bram, Cyrielle, Torsten and I were the main BBQ crew.

We had a lot of time for that BBQ.

On the last night we all went on a boat cruise along the Pearl River.

There were lots of lights from builidings and bridges and the river kept changing colour as we drifted along.  It was also my only sighting of the Guangzhou TV Tower which I had neglected to go and visit earlier that day.  Here are Cyrielle and I with our best tower impressions.

I suppose Chinese New Year wasn’t as big as I thought it would be, but then it’s a family holiday, more like our Christmas, so most Chinese people will spend it at home playing cards and eating dinner.  Besides, our little group at the hostel had such a great time that I didn’t feel as if my expectations were disappointed.   

On the Saturday after New Year the group dispersed and we all went our separate ways.  I was sad, but not too sad, because I was off to Hong Kong to continue my travels with a certain Miss Sarah Sherratt...