Yangshuo

Pretty nice view I think. Lots of little mountains.

Our first stop in our travels was Yangshuo, a small tourist city in Guang Xi province. It ended up being a 12 hour trip by bus - it was made longer because some of the roads that they would usually have taken were washed out by the typhoons a few days earlier. The bus we took was a sleeper bus, which meant that instead of seats, they had rows of bunk beds. The trip was quite good, although the beds were not quite as long as I'd hoped. Sadly, my phone was running out of power so it beeped a lot and I needed it on so I could stay in contact with Fan’s travel guide friend, Richard. Also, I had a temperature of 39°C for the whole night and was feeling a little sick.


Inches from death. Or at least a little sick.

When we arrived early the next morning, Richard met us and showed us around. He also showed me to a barefoot doctor, as my high temperature and illness were becoming an issue. The doctor looked at my tongue and gave me a poisonous drink with twigs that I was to drink 3 times a day for the next 2 days. She also said that if my temperature was not down by later that evening, I would need an antibiotic drip and some Chinese medicine energy solution. By that afternoon, I was beginning to feel better so I went for a boat ride with my other 3 friends to see some of the the famous mountains of the area. However, I began to feel unwell again by the end of the boat ride. When one of my friends went back to the doctor's place to pick up the rest of my medicine, the doctor was alarmed enough at my symptoms that she caught a motorbike back to my hotel room with my friend so that she could examine me in person. She determined that I was still too sick and that I would need a drip. (In China, drips are the preferred form of medicine for anything ranging from a cold to impending death.)

Her establishment could not offer such services, so we went to the establishment of a friend of hers from university, who specialised in drips and more Western medicine. This drip room was a small shop that opened out directly onto the street. They gave me the drip and complementary grapes.

That night, I sweated so much I had to change shirts many times and used every one of the shirts I had brought. The next morning, I felt a lot better and went for a bike ride to a place called Moon Mountain and then climbed it.

Moon Mountain was about an hour’s bike ride from the city. The mountain gets its name from a huge hole through the middle. They say that in the distance from every angle it looks like the moon at a different part of its cycle. In any case, we climbed first to the hole and then to the ridge above the hole. There were old ladies selling bottles of water at the top who were in much better shape than us. We were quite exhausted and they were casually running up and down the mountain with styrofoam freezers full of chilled water and juice. After that, we descended and returned to the city.


One of my friends Kayaking.

The next day, we went kayaking with Richard’s brother which was great fun except that we got exceptionally sunburnt and one of my friends ran into a tree, flipping her kayak and almost losing her camera in the water. The other friend who was with her had to jump in the river to retrieve the waterproof bag. He was very anxious to do this as it held his camera as well as hers.

On the way back from kayaking, we say a truck that had fallen off a small dirt road into a rice field. We had to wait while a crane lifted it back onto the road. This was quite cool and it was really interesting to see how the people dealt with such an occurrence. It was certainly treated a lot more casually than I imagine it would have been in a Western country. But perhaps that is because that kind of thing happens more often there.

That evening, we went to Richard’s house for cooking lessons. It was quite fun, although I think I will not open a restaurant just yet. We also got Richard advice on how to precede with our travels and where to go next. He was very helpful.

Here is a small collection of photos from my stay in Yangshuo.

Yangshuo

Back to Hong Kong

The view, looking north, from the Peak.

Before heading out on our travels, we had arranged meet a two friends in Hong Kong. These were the two friends that we would go backpacking with. I also had to pick up the suit I had ordered. This time, we knew our way around a little better and managed to visit the Peak as well as going to the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, as it had just come out in HK and would not be out in China for many months.

Mongkok makes Shanghai look like a village and Melbourne look like a distant training post.

We then took a train up to the border at Shenzhen and caught a overnight bus from there. It is important to note that the day before leaving HK I though I was dying because my wrists looked thin and the day I left I started to have some sort of cold.


A classic Hong Kong Island Street. Note the tram to ecstasy.

Foshan and Fan Ginsong

This is Fan and me at a one of the largest ceramic showrooms. As you can see, my leg is still wrapped with a compression bandage.

I knew that Fan Ginsong lived in this part of China, so I had contacted him a few weeks earlier asking if he would be interested in meeting up. He was interested so I scheduled a time to go to Foshan for a few days. It turned out that Foshan was only about 2 hours drive from Zhongshan so it was not a problem for a friend and I to get there by bus. Fan then picked us up and took us to their international dorm (in China these often act as hotels as well as dorms) At the time there were almost no students because it was the holidays.

Fan gave a tour of the inner city and left us to walk around for the evening. The next day he showed us their student work from the previous year of graduates and then he took us to the more industrial parts of Foshan, we visited a few of the many furniture markets and ceramics show rooms. These were quite impressive - huge buildings full of furniture of many types. The industrial ceramics were also very impressive. Companies supply incredibly accurate mock wood, brick and stone for external and internal use in architectural settings that is visually indistinguishable from the real thing.

While in Foshan, we discussed the rest of our trip with Fan and he offered to ask a guide he knew in a city we had planned to visit (Yangshuo) to help us. He gave us the phone number of the guide and called ahead about our visit. This proved quite useful later in our trip. We left Foshan after three days.


This is a caterpillar. I saw it at a temple in Foshan

My 21st in Hong Kong

For my birthday, a close friend showed me around Hong Kong for a few days and took me to a great restaurant. We started out from Zhongshan on the morning of my birthday and took a ferry to Victoria Harbour, HK. When we arrived in Hong Kong, we secured our accommodation and then spent the day shopping in Mongkok (a shopping district on the Kowloon peninsula) where there are many camera shops full of rare stock and other nice things. I was very interested in getting a Leica CM or a Zeiss Ikon by Carl Zeiss. Of course, these cameras are several times my budget so I came away with nothing but it was nice to see them for a change.

That evening we went on a another ferry that took us around the harbour during the impressive Hong Kong Light Show. Eventually we got off and walked to a restaurant at Causeway Bay that was in the front of the Hong Kong Convention Centre. I was able to recognise the building because there have been a few Jackie Chan films that feature this building. In any case we had a great dinner and then a whole Haagen Dazs cake (bar one piece we gave to a child from a near by table). After dinner I was feeling "bao si la", (full to the brink of death) so we decided to avoid too much more food or activity after that.


This is the cake, it consisted of 1kg of icecream and needed dry ice to stay cold while we were aboard the ferry around the harbour.

The next day, we continued the quest to look at all the great things available in Hong Kong and walked through Causeway Bay (on Hong Kong Island). At one point, not knowing what to do next, we took a random tram just to see where it would go and for the experience of riding a tram. It ended up that the tram took us to some rather remote and industrial part of Hong Kong. We looked around the wharfs for awhile and then caught another bus. This bus went back to the very top of Tsim Sha Tsui, which was quite a long trip. We then took another bus back to Ocean Terminal, a huge shopping complex, and explored that for awhile.

After three days, we were to return to the Mainland but before that we looked around Tsim Sha Tsui and I had ordered a tailored suit. We would be back in a week or so to pick it up and meet other friends.

Our route back to China included a day trip to Macau which was quite interesting in comparison to Hong Kong. Hong Kong made me think of a Britain that does not rain all the time, where you can buy good local food and where there is an Asian drive for shopping. The public transport is great and most other public services are well designed. Macau, on the other hand, seemed a lot more like its father nation, Portugal. The roads are winding and city planning was done after all the buildings were built. The food is of course great because the fusion has had a long time to develop. I though that Macau felt a lot more European and seems to have retained more history. That said, we did not visit any casinos so perhaps my impressions could be skewed.


This is the Zeiss Ikon, probably my favorite camera.

Heading South

These are the friends that saw me off as I left Hangzhou. Younghee's Boyfriend, Younghee and Shemmy.

After returning from Beijing, I left my ATM card in Shanghai Airport and spent a long week back in Hangzhou preparing to head south. I was to go to a place called Zhongshan where the family of a friend of mine was from. We would stay there for about a week before starting off on an extended travel though mid-China.

Zhongshan was a rather small village but quite a nice place to rest as my foot was still healing. I was staying at the house of a friend's grandfather and essentially every day after Yum Cha, he would go off to play Mahjong for the rest of the day. We had a nice time not doing to much for a change.

After a few days it was getting rather close to my 21st Birthday so we across to Hong Kong. We would return to Zhongshan a few days later before meeting other friends and leaving for our travels.