The Bund, Acrobats and Pandas!

So we made it to Suzhou, the bus was much more civil than the trains and we actually arrived with some energy to sight see!  We saw the twin pagodas and two different traditional Chinese gardens.  Suzhou is sold as being the Eastern Venice, so I was expecting a cutsie little canal town – but it's a HUGE city!  And it does have a population of 5.7million – so I should have known better!!

The bullet train to Shanghai was brilliant, it took us 30mins and we reached speeds of 330km/hr – best train journey yet!  We decided to view the Bund at night – what an introduction to Shanghai, it looked amazing!  The buzz of being there, seeing the high rises across the river and then the more traditional Western looking buildings opposite, it was spectacular.  Whilst in Shanghai we also visited the Propaganda museum, this was very randomly in the bottom of an apartment block!  When we arrived we thought we must be in the wrong place as there was no signs but the guard came up to us, very cloak and dagger, slipped us a small map of the apartment complex of how to get to the museum – perhaps the Government isn't too keen to advertise the museum!  It was interesting to see the lies the Government would tell, how they would show Americans to be grey little wrinkly men that mighty Asians should squash and how they would use it to promote general work and home ethics, pushing steel production or urging the younger generation to be schooled in the countryside.  Crazy to think the propaganda posters only stopped 30 yrs ago!

We splashed out and treated ourselves to an acrobatic show.  We went to see Era, performed at Shanghai Circus World and it was choreographed by someone from Cirque de Soleil.  It was amazing, the acrobatics where just great and the performers must be fearless!  The finale is outstanding and has 7 motorbikes circling around in a small metal sphere – I don't even know how 7 of them fit in there never mind how they then circled upside down and didn't crash into one another!

Our worse meal so far happened in Shanghai Airport, we were lured in by a chain advertised by Bruce Lee's face called 'Kungfu' – it appeared to be like McDs but with Chinese food.  Our meals came with chicken wings which were OK, warm lettuce in a kind of soy sauce and most alarmingly bone & chicken feet soup!  It's the most revolting thing I've ever seen and I couldn't bring myself to try it or much of the meal!!

We have now arrived in Chengdu (after cheating and catching our flight!)  After a confusing 2 hours trying to get to the pandas we abandoned the trip (as they sleep by late morning) instead we went to JinSha Museum.  It is an excavation site which has found objects from aprox. 1300BC in what they call the Shu Era.  It was very interesting; the gold mask was the centre piece but the sheer volume of pottery, jade, gold, bronze and stone statues that have been recovered is very impressive.

Today we successfully navigated to the Pandas!  And they are so so so cute!!  We saw fully grown pandas, sub-adults (3-5yrs old) and around 8 cubs (6-18months old).  As we were there early they were all quite active and playing around with each other, then came feeding and then by 11 it was bedtime again – it's a hard life being a panda!  The funniest thing was watching 3 keepers try to lure a cub down from a tree as it was nap time; he wasn't for coming down so they brought out step ladders, as soon as he saw them he climbed to a higher branch!  Cunning little thing!

You probably all heard us mention visiting Tibet in our travel plans before we came away; we were getting concerned with costs of this trip and now fate has made the decision for us as the Chinese Government are not allowing travel to Tibet nor to Northern Sichuan.  Funnily enough the travel lady in the hostel didn't know why there was a travel ban, they just seem to accept the limited information that the Government gives them; BBC news tells us that there has been a clash between Tibetan monks and the Chinese Police which has turned nasty.  So our route is now to go from Chengdu down to Yunnan Province as the scenery there is meant to be wonderful and Shangri-La is close enough to Tibet to show us some monasteries etc.  So that's our next plan, providing the Chinese Bank Holiday doesn't hold us back too much!

Love K&C

Too many trains!!!

We've noticed that a lot of the sights in China have an inappropriate Disneyesque feel to them. The Great Wall was littered with theme park style attractions such as a cable car to take you up and a Luge track to get you back down (some parts of the wall even have a zip-line!). Nearby 'Gift shops' were selling cheap Obama dressed as a communist T-shirts (who needs Mickey Mouse!) as well as popular slogans such as 'I heart BJ' – being of course Beijing... Most recently we went to an original section of the city wall in Nanjing that has a city gate of great historic significance. What we found was loads of carnival stalls blocking the entrance and really fake plastic statues throughout. None of which seem to be in keeping with the historical significance but the Chinese seem to love it!

We finished up in Pingyao by taking a trip to the Wang Family Courtyard (the Chinese equivalent of a impressive stately home) and visiting the Underground Castle. The Underground Castle is about 10 kilometers worth of tunnels underneath a small walled village built to protect against invaders. We hired an English speaking guide called Lily for Y40 (£4) as we didn't want to get lost underground in the dark and only about a kilometer worth of tunnels have been safely reinforced – plus Lilly amused Kat by saying 'willage' instead of village for the whole tour. It was really interesting to wonder through the tunnels and hear about all the traps that were set up across 3 levels, even if they were never put to use as the site was never invaded!

From Pingyao we caught a sleeper train to Xi'an which got us in at about 6am. We checked into the hostel and half-asleep went in search of the city walls with Hannah who we had met a few days ago on the train to Pingyao. Once we found the city walls and climbed up them (this took much longer than it should have thanks to my map reading!) we hired a tandem bike and set off to cycle all of its 14 kilometers within the 100 minutes that we had paid for. It certainly woke us up and it was great fun! We then finished the day by walking past the Drum and Bell Towers and visiting the Muslim quarter which had tiny streets stuffed with stalls selling all kinds of food and The Great Mosque which is a temple complex with a combination of Chinese and Muslim architecture.

The next day we then caught the bus to the Terracotta Warriors. We had spoken to quite a few people that had said they were disappointed by this sight but we both thought it was absolutely fantastic and one of the best things we've done in China so far. Truly 'epic' is an appropriate word to describe the aircraft hanger sized area pit 1 occupies. Seeing all those life-sized warriors lined up in rows is very, very impressive!

It was a long train journey to Nanjing the day after the Warriors. We left at 11am and arrived at 3am. We had to get a taxi to our hostel and when bartering with a taxi driver he gathered some of his friends around him, repeated a price Kat had said and they all went "Phwa-ha-ha-ha" like evil bond villains! Once we walked off his tone sobered and he agreed to our price…

In Nanjing we went to the Nanjing memorial museum that detailed the rape and pillage of the city in an unprovoked attack by the Japanese in 1937. It was quite brutal with very graphic pictures of the Chinese being executed – not one for the kids! It was interesting if a little bit biased as they left out any mention that the Nanjing council locked the common people of Nanjing in their city walls (whilst running away themselves) so they could become 'hardened like jade' from the attack. Over 300,000 people died.

We also went to the Purple Mountain (hills) in Nanjing which was a nice break from the city life as everything was green! There were of course still thousands of Chinese tour groups…

Yesterday we caught another train (yes we're really sick of them now!) to Hangzhou. This time it was a day time train so we booked hard seats, which are actually pretty comfy. The train was two hours late. When we arrived at Hangzhou no buses to our hostel were running so we had to get a taxi. We found out after a long queue that metered taxis ignore white people! All of them that wound down their windows shook their heads and drove off when we told them where we wanted to go. We managed to get a taxi from a train station tout that didn't have a taxi sign for about a pound more than we should have paid – I suppose we know now for next time.

Hangzhou is a great place with a lovely big lake right in the middle of it. Today we walked around the lake, climbed (well got the escalator and glass lift up!) a giant pagoda and saw a yellow dragon waterfall! Whilst it is still busy there were little pockets of emptiness where we were the only ones in sight! It's really picturesque and I think its helping us unwind from some of the stress of the big cities.

Next after another day in Hangzhou we're heading to Suzhou (by bus!) which has lots of pretty gardens then we'll be arriving to Shanghai by a half hour train journey. Instead of our original plan to catch a 44 hour train to Chengdu on the other side of the country we've splashed out and bought a plane ticket so that it will now take us a cool 3 hours instead!

Love C&K. x

The Great Wall, Train Journeys & Shanxi Province

So to pick up where we left off…the Great Wall was amazing to see, it was a real Beijing highlight. We had a lovely couple of hours exploring the wall and watchtowers.  However it turned out to be a Great (shopping) Wall Trip – this will teach us to book onto a cheap tour!  We got paraded around a ceramics museum, a silk factory, a tea shop (at least we got some tasters here!) and a free foot massage where an evil Tibetan doctor tried to diagnose everyone with some kind of aliment that needed immediate herbal medicine treatment!!  But they didn't get any money out of us and at least we got to see the Wall!

The next day we saw the beautiful Temple of Heaven.  Then on my birthday (thanks for all the birthday texts/messages) we headed for the summer palace.  This is a beautiful collection of temples at a lakeside with impressive bridges forming the walkway around the lake – it's a welcome break from the city-life of Beijing!  Unfortunately no Peking duck for my birthday tea L our tummies aren't quite equipped for the Chinese diet – so we had to settle for beer & western food in the hostel bar!

We then headed off on our first train journey adventure to Datong.  The train journey demonstrated one thing – just how curious the Chinese are of us!  Sometimes the curiosity is sweet; like the little Chinese girl sat opposite us taking a shine to Chris then doing a full photo shoot of the two of us for about ½ an hour!  Sometimes the curiosity is them trying to be helpful; like when they all (about 10 people walked down the carriage to see it) watched me write mandarin asking for an onward ticket to our next destination (and my dodgy mandarin writing worked!)  Then sometimes their curiosity is just a little odd; like when they all came to see what we were watching on the laptop – I presume that they won't look at it and think 'oh yes Big Bang Theory, I love that!'  It doesn't pay to be self conscious in China, as the watching and often then the laughing, seems to be a frequent part of our days!

Datong is a coal mining town and we had been told not to expect much from it and that to visit the sights and leave.  We actually quite liked it there as we found the people much friendlier than in Beijing.  We visited the 9 dragon screen in the centre of Datong which was cool to see.  But the main event there was going to the Yungang Caves – 5^th Century caves with the earliest Buddhist carvings in China.  There are 45 caves in the complex – some of them are massive and contain HUGE Buddha's – up to 17metres tall!  One cave had over 10,000 images of Buddha carved – it was very impressive.

Our next adventure was our first night train – up in the middle bunks it was lights out as soon as we got on and we slept really well until the conductor lady was tugging at our feet to tell us that we had nearly reached our stop – Pingyao.  Pingyao is described in the Lonely Planet as 'seeing the Old China in action'.  It's a small town (in China's standard as only 500,000 live here!) which still has its original city walls, lots of small streets or hutongs, lanterns hanging up everywhere, beautiful courtyards and lots of historical buildings.  It is fairly touristy though which slightly spoils the historical feel – but then getting a Coke float and a burger & chips is always an advantage to that tourist hotspot!  We have plans for a day trip to an Underground Castle which is nearby then we head by overnight train to Xi'an & the Terracotta Army! 

There are lots of photos to come on Flickr but China seems to intermittently ban our uploading, our emails and most websites – so not sure when we'll be able to get them up next! 

Love K&C.

Goodbye Nepal, Hello China!

The Chinese love to climb! This is what we have found out from our two days so far in Beijing. At any photo opportunity they start climbing, so much so that we regularly see signs telling people 'no climbing please'. Naturally these get ignored…

We were supposed fly out of Kathmandu on March 31^st but Air China had other ideas for us as we found out when we arrived at the airport and our flight had been cancelled, for about a month without us knowing! The next flight was in two days so Air China kindly paid for 2 nights in a 5* hotel, all our food and a taxi back to the airport. I had steak for breakfast two days in a row!!! The hotel was a world away from the noise of Thamel and had electricity all hours of the day! It did cost 30 times more than our original hostel though so you would expect something good for all that money.

When we did finally catch our flight we flew via Lhasa in Tibet and we were both worried we would need a permit just to transfer planes which you cannot attain unless you go via an organized tour. Luckily everything worked out fine and the views on the plane were phenomenal! We saw Everest and there were no clouds over Tibet so we could see the barren, rocky red landscape with crystal clarity.

We arrived to Beijing after 3 flights and caught the subway just before it closed to our hostel at the dead of night where we pretty much went straight to sleep. The next day we wondered around Tiananmen Square and had the obligatory photos taken with the giant portrait of Mao (when in China do as the Chinese do!). Mao is a much revered former leader of China who the Chinese love! We sidestepped the Forbidden City as it was a Sunday and crazy busy with Chinese tourists and instead went to the Ming Wall ruins where the cherry blossom festival was taking place. Whilst wondering around we began to realize just how big Beijing is. Especially compared to Nepal where we could (and did) walk to every sight!

Today we went to the Forbidden City which had lots of ancient gates, temples, very pretty gardens and Chinese tourists climbing everything for a photo! A nearby park with good views where we watched pensioners practicing Tai Chi, dancing and playing shuttlecock hacky sack, it looked great fun! The Drum tower, Bell tower and the Lama temple which had a MASSIVE Buddha 28 meters high carved out of a single piece of Sandalwood!!! It's in the Guinness book of records too!

Tomorrow we have booked onto a Great Wall tour where we'll be taking in the Mu tianyu section of the wall (little bit renovated, little bit crumbling down). We will also be seeing the Ming tombs and the Olympic stadium aka 'The Birds Nest'!

We found out that our blog is banned in China so hopefully this post will work!

Love K&C

Pokhara, Holi & Kayak Clinic

Would you believe that only 8 days after postage that our ‘small package’ actually made it safely back home!!!!  Very impressed with the Nepali post system! 

After our trek we had a whole week of relaxation in Pokhara.  In the middle of this week was Holi.  A crazy festival celebrating water and colour before the start of monsoon season.  It involves lots of excited locals, music, parades and people saying ‘happy Holi’ before slapping some coloured powder on you or squirting you with a water gun!  We got coated in mostly red powder (see flickr photos!) as they seem to give westerners ‘special attention!’  That week we also did a little sight seeing to Devis Falls and the Bat Cave (thousands of bats of the ceiling – was very cool!)

The Kayak Clinic began on the lake in Pokhara; here they teach you the basics – paddling in a straight line (surprisingly tricky!), doing turns, self rescue, team rescue and Eskimo roll.  We have never swallowed so much water in our lives practicing all the techniques!  I really needed a nose peg and by the end of day we were exhausted and left wondering how we’d do it for another 3 days on a river!

Day 2 came and we set off on our Lower Seti River adventure.  I must say at this point that we had a brilliant group - mostly because they might all read this! Hehe.  We were separated into 3 groups for when we did rapids; The A Team was Chris, Shereen & Andrew; Group 2 was Kat & Dr Jim and Group 3 was Michael, Will & Jess; we all bonded in that English way of banter and competitiveness that kept us going through the 4 days!  This was also a day of learning – high&low press, eddy in and out of currents and getting through (or not in my case) the rapids.  Mostly grade 1-2 to start with which Chris sailed through and managed independent Eskimo Rolls, I struggled and really hated the first morning.  But the food and the camp cheered me up!

Day 3 slightly more relaxing to begin with and I didn’t total on every rapid so it was becoming more enjoyable!  The scenery is beautiful down the river Seti and it was nice to have time to take it in and appreciate the surroundings.  I learnt guitar roll too (easier version of Eskimo Roll) and even managed one all on my ownsome!  We both came out on a looooong grade 2+ which bloody hurt due to the shallow waters and the rocks!  Again camp was a welcome break and we had chips & pasta carbonara that night – lush!  Our last day and it was the big one – it was grade 3 day!  We had some warm up rapids and amazingly I stayed on board all day!  We had to get out and have a look at the grade 3 to decide whether we kayaked or got on the raft to clear it; I was almost wussing out for the raft when a bit of encouragement for the team made me go for the kayak!  Soooo scary but sooo amazing when we both got down it!!

It was 4 days of pushing ourselves physically (our muscles really ache now!)  But an amazing new experience; we made some really good friends; we’d recommend paddle Nepal to anyone it was so well organised and we both cleared the grade 3 – WOOP! 

We’re back to Kathmandu now and preparing for China in 4 days – eek!  So excited!!

A Small Package!

It’s now been a month since we left the UK and yesterday we decided to buy some souvenirs of Nepal. Going elephant crazy we bought a small blue hand carved elephant and a very pretty elephant throw that might adorn our sofa when we return! We had already bought some woollen hats and gloves for our trek that we’ve become quite attached to so we thought today we’d find the local post office and send a package home.

Down some back streets and asking a few different locals we managed to locate the post office where we were told we’d need to find a box. “A box” we said “do you not sell a box that we could use?” “No, no” the woman replied “just ask around the nearby shops and they should be able to sell you a box”. Out the post office we went in search of a box asking at the shacks (which were the local shops) if they had a box we could buy. Naturally they all laughed at us and told us “no” they had no boxes to sell.

A helpful man understanding our plight suggested we head down to the fruit market on the corner of the street – at least we think that’s what he suggested! Down to the fruit market we wandered and we spied a lovely empty box of the finest imported Chinese Apples lying on the floor looking a bit dishevelled and a little bit like the rubbish that it was. We approached the proprietor of the fruit stand and asked if we could buy the box on the floor at his feet to send things back home with. He said we could have the box for free whilst laughing. Feeling that we at least owed him something we then bought 1 kilo of oranges from his store for 90 rupees.

Clutching the box in our hands we walked confidently back to the post office, proudly displaying to all the nearby shops that there are in fact boxes to be found (literally) on the streets of Pokhara. Upon entering the post office the woman smiled as if we had passed a test and asked how much we’d paid for the box and seemed very pleased when we explained we had gotten it for free but bought some oranges in return.

Souvenirs safely in the box we were then asked if we had our own tape to seal up the box. Unsurprisingly considering we hadn’t even thought to bring our own box we did not have any of our own tape with us. Luckily they let us use theirs (and we used a lot because the box looked like it was falling apart!). Kat was then asked to write the address and ‘a small package’ on the box. The now lumpy looking box ‘safely’ sealed up tight was then covered in (admittedly very pretty) stamps by the woman resulting in this (there are many more stamps on the other side!) –

Hopefully in 3 - 4 months this package might arrive back home...

Poon Hill & Annapurna Base Camp Trek

Summarising the trek isn’t easy but I’ll give it a go!  We saw some of the most beautiful scenery which seemed to change over a couple of hours of walking from grassy hills, to forest, to canyon, to river bed to snowy mountains.  We learnt to hate stone steps and must have gone up and down thousands of them over the eleven days!  Chris challenged himself by firstly trying to grow a beard (work in progress) and secondly by carrying the rucksack the whole way (massively appreciated by me!).  We coped with the altitude no problems, got up to base camp 2 days ahead of schedule, watched 3 avalanches, survived on a staple diet of daal bhat (rice, mild curry, lentils and pickles – and free second helpings!) and even found a place that did chocolate cake! 

There were a few stand out highlights of our trek; the first came very early on when we got the local bus to our start point at Nayapul – we missed our stop so the conductor put us on a school bus going the opposite way and then they put us on the top of another local bus to make it back to the start point!  Exciting but a little scary riding on top of a bus through the valleys! 

On day 3 we got to Poon Hill which gave us a beautiful view of the Annapurna Mountain Range and insight into how far we still had left to travel!  That evening we stayed in a small town called Ban Thanti, the only westerners there, they asked if we would donate towards their hydro-electricity project (they currently have no power) we agreed to part with a small donation (about £9) and the whole village came to thank us by singing and dancing.  They performed for over an hour and the only way to make the singing stop was to do a bit of dancing of our own much to their amusement!  We got given flower necklaces and although initially the experience was an awkward one, it’s now one of our fondest memories!

It was day 6 when we made it to Machhapuchhre Base Camp, through deep snow that came to my hip!  As we arrived the sky misted over and a blizzard came down, the fire under the table kept us warm that night!  The next day, amazingly it was a bright sunny morning up to Annapurna Base Camp, the fresh blanket of snow making it even more special.  We reached 4,130metres – it was beautiful and slightly overwhelming that we’d managed to get there under our own steam, a real achievement. 

We stopped at a natural hot springs on the way back down, which was a lovely way to complete the trek.  It is nice to be back in the same room in Pokhara, feels like home for the moment!  We have another 7 nights here before the kayaking course takes us towards Kathmandu. 

Lots of love K&C