Just chillin' in Hangzhou :)

After a very scenic train ride through the country from Xi'an, we arrived wide eyed at the beautiful Hangzhou. After yet another small 'disaster' of getting on the wrong bus and heading in the wrong direction a kind young chinese guy helped us, with his electronic translator, in the right direction. Our hostel was pretty cool, set upon quite a steep hill, this was not ideal with our thousands of bags we had accumilated, but it had a pretty little pond in the middle that went through the resturant and cool little wooden swings around the courtyard. We dumped our stuff and took off for a stroll around the West Lake while the sun was setting. The West Lake was a huge lake set in a Chinese National Park, surrounded by temples and pagodas and so many ponds and forests. This was to be our 'home' for the next 6 days.

As we couldnt get a train straight to Shanghai from Xi'an, we thought it would be easier and so much cheaper for us to stay outside of the city and settled on Hangzhou. Our second day we set off at 5am for the big city, our aim for the day was to get our Vietnam visa...so after travelling by train for 2hours and racing through the city by taxi for 20 minutes, we arrived at a pretty empty embassy office!! Yeh..you've guessed it, it was closed! I was sooo mad, I grumbled to the guy behind the desk "I have been travelling since 5am this morning to get here, you better tell me this place isnt closed"...after a lot of Chinese talking to me, the guy took me up in the lift to show me the entrance to the embassy. The sign stated "Due to 'some' festival the embassy will be closed from 12th-16th June"...I stormed off...back into the lift, and shouted at the guy "You should put this on your website if your gonna close it!!" Stomped out of the building and parked myself down outside! I could have cried!

So 20 minutes pass where I blame Dom, stating it was his "stupid" fault that we had to come here and saying "right well lets just go back to Hangzhou, I hate Shanghai" Dom slowly talked me round, and bribed me with a McDonald's in order for me to stay in the city for the day!! Thank goodness he is so good at this, as Shanghai ended up being a pretty city. We did the usual and walked around for most of the day, sightseeing and photographing. The view from the Bund was amazing and the skyline looked amazing in the blue summer sky. The weather was so hot, so this especially cheered me up. We had definatley made the better decision to stay out of Shanghai, due to Expo and the huge amount of tourists, it was enough to handle for only one day.

The next few days in Hangzhou we chilled out around the lake, taking in the views of the surrounding forests and beautiful lakes. Chinese fishermen lined the lake on one side and bikers filled the small paths. Our days consisted of walking to the ice cream shop for this scrummy mango pot ice cream sorbet, mmm mmm! And then finishing that off with some popcorn, a great diet. The lake was so tranquil and serene, completely different from any of the places we had stayed in China so far.
Hangzhou was surrounded by tea fields and springs and wells everywhere. We went up to the famous Dragon Well, were Longjing tea was made. It was up in the moantains in a wooded area. There was a huge well where some superstitious tea thing happened, and it was so clear I just wanted to just in to relieve myself from the humidity. We were tempted to get bikes out for a cycle round but couldnt find the kiosk, haha! It was nice to get away from so much hustle and bustle, yet we still couldnt escape the red caps! They literally got a guided tour through a signposted park! I thought this was pretty strange but one thing we have learnt from 3 weeks in China is how crazy the Chinese were!!

Day 4 came quickly and we were due to leave, as we set off on the journey with our bags in tow, mistakingly getting on the right bus in the wrong direction, we arrived at the South station ready for a 23hour train to Guilin. 1 Hour later around 7:45pm, after our train was due to leave at 7pm, we found out this unfortunately wasnt going to be our night we would travel to Guilin :( We did, however, have the option of waiting at the station for 1-2days for the train to arrive. I personally wasnt really up for this option so decided to get a taxi back to our hostel and stay for 2 more nights!!

Eventually, after 6 days in Hangzhou we were more than ready to be on our way. We got the girl on reception to ring the train company to check our train was running...which to our delight it was! So we got the right bus in the right direction and got there with, what we thought would be, minutes to spare. We had met a guy Andy who was also travelling on the same train at our hostel, so he now joined us for a few days around Guilin and Yangshuo. He is probably one of the coolest guys we had met on our trip, it was definately going to be emotional when we would part ways. Me and Dom would shed many tears...(haha, he told me to write this haha) So 7pm came and went, luckily Andy could understand Chinese, and had found out our train was delayed for 2-3hours!! GREAT! The temptation for food, other than pot noodles, crept upon us, and after Andy suggested KFC, which was 'outside' the station, he set off with our order written down to purchase tea. He returned EMPTY HANDED!! We were gutted, BUT as we knew our train was delayed for another 2hours we thought a KFC taxi run would be a great alternative!! Off we trotted in our taxi to the kernel, returning this time full of goodies :) just as we sat down, spread the mayonnaise over the tasty looking fries, our train arrived and everyone started boarding!! Great timing or what...Guilin here we come.

Xi'An - A city of warriors, another Great Wall and a mullet named Karl

So we couldn't get a sleeper bed for the 11 hour train ride to Xi'An from Beijing so reluctantly settled for a hard seat. The train was an overnight train so we were in for a comfortable sleep
From India I had visions of a hard seat being literally a wooden bench from the cattle class but it was a seat similar to those on English trains....luxury!!!
It turns out they seat all the foreigners together so we were sat opposite an English couple, so we sat and chatted about each of our travels around India, played a bit of cards and then attempted to sleep!...Sarie managed to get around 6 hours and I managed to get 1 and a half hours..
Anyways we arrived at half 8 and were welcomed by a 'Sarah Wain' board for our free pickup. Vicky and Lee decided at £2 each a night they will join in. As well as the fact it said, 'Free Beer' on their website!! In the taxi to the hostel we were planning that if we drank about 8 beers each a day then we would get our beds for free in theory!!!
Who were we kidding, as we arrived we checked and it turned out that you only get 1 free beer when you check in...dammm!

We were welcomed to our room by an american named Karl and he had the best Mullet I've ever seen, it was epic! a nice short back and sides and then he turns round and there it was, a massive curly mullet...very erm....cool!! the first words we exchanged were the mullet saying "if you're gonna leave the room, can you shut the door"...jeez, hello and good day to you too sir it certainly is a pleasure to meet you....Little did we know that this guy turned out to be a cool guy! giving us his 3 chinese phone numbers as well as his email so we can meet up in Nanning, as well as multiple lectures about the history and politics of China....what a guy!!

That night the 4 of us decided to head to the Muslim Quarter to the street stalls to get some food. Night markets everywhere and we found a little Chinese restaurant serving noodles and bbq kebabs with various meat, for a ridiculous price. We filled our boots and got a large beer each and it came to £4 for the 4 of us!!



We had planned to visit the terracotta warriors on our second day in Xi'an and after an early wake up and a sleepy bus ride to the Warriors we bagan our 4hour exploration of each individual pit. We had heard that it was best to see the short film on the history of which dynasty the warriors had originated from and when they had been discovered, this gave us a great insight to what we were about to see. We thought it would be best to start at the 'least' exciting pit, so entered Pit 3 first. It was pretty impressive still with a few warriors and then pit 2 was the tomb of Emperor Qin, showing the grounds of where he had built his terracotta warriors, which didn't have as many warriors this time but was a huge area, it had the odd warrior missing a limb or just a head but no full warriors. Then we went to the last and final pit 1....The biggest and by far the most impressive!! there were around 6,000 warriors and horses!! each one had a different face and there were the soldiers, the generals and the infantries all lined up to supposedly protect Qin even when he was dead.
We then caught the local bus back, again falling asleep and headed to the main bus station to catch the bus back to the Hostel. On our way we found a little shop ran by a fat little kid! seemed a bit strange, so out of curiosity we asked how much a 600ml bottle of beer was....25p!! bargains so we took every bottle he had and made our way back to the hostel, me and Lee sharing a beer for the bus journey! this is the life!!

The next day we rented out tandem bikes and cycled round the wall that outlined the Xi'an city. Biking on a tandem was a struggle! but we eventually got the hang of it! It was ridiculously hot too which made it all the more harder, and the fact that we were given 100minutes to get around the wall which is supposedly 30km!! that was never gonna happen! me and sarie could hardly go straight!! Lee and Vicky seemed to be naturals with the bikes but we gave it a good shot, in all fairness they had adjustable seats, whereas ours was a bike for midgets...my knees were up by my chin!...after stopping many times for tea breaks, we managed to get round the wall in 105minutes...and the bike renting company charged us an extra £1 for being 5 mins late!! We were not too impressed!!



Xi'an was soo much fun, it was a complete change to the fast hustle and bustle of Beijing. We also visited the great mosque which was pretty unique and completely different, set in a garden..we spent most of the afternoon there when we were hungover after the England game...the fact that it was on at 2.30am ourtime was bad enough and then playing drinking games before didn't help and then the rice wine found itself involved in the game which then ruined the night...after having it in Nepal, I should have known better! it's leathel and should be used to fuel cars, not to be consumed in our bodies!!...lucky I didn't go blind!!
That evening we went to the Wild goose pagoda and watched the fountain/light show which was very impressive!! dragged on a bit but was still a great way to end our time in Xi'An...then we parted our ways with Vicky and Lee, they were heading off to Chengdu whilst we headed the opposite way to Hangzhou and we should bump into one another when we get to Guilin.

As for the Mullet, well we may bump into him somewhere along the line, although we think we may have walked in on him laying on his bed having phone sex so maybe we'll try not to distub him anymore!

Beijing...temples, markets, scorpions and prison cells!!

So China was to be our 4th adventure in our trip, we were excited and not sure what to expect. It seemed such a huge place we werent entireley sure where we wanted to visit and after hearing lots of 'China's rubbish' stories about the place we decided to give it a go and see what all the fuss was about. After spending so long in Hong Kong and not wanting to leave all our friends and the city behind, we set off on the 24hour train journey to Beijing. It was luxury compared to our Indian train journeys, we got a duvet, pillow and our own bed. One we didnt have about 4 other Indians sleeping on it with us.
Once we had arrived in Beijing we had the issue of finding our hostel, we thought that this would be pretty easy but 4hours later we found out that is definately was not. It all went pear shaped at the station really...we had read somewhere that the train station had its own subway station, it didnt...and we were adamant that it was there, we just werent looking properly...so 1hour later, we were sat on the underground floor, bags spread out all around us...our luggage now included a football, a food cooling bag, two packs of chinese tea, lots of chinese medicine (thank you Nova) and all our original 5 bags of baggage. The laptop was out, Lonely Planet (aka 'The Bible') was open and we had 4 locals trying to understand our English!! It didnt really work...but they managed to write us some Chinese down so we could get to Dongcheng (the area we wanted to go). So off we went again, our bags were back on our raw shouldered backs and we trekked through the 35'c heat to wherever they pointed for us to go. We had our peice of paper out showing anyone and everyone on the way, just to check we were going the right way...yes...we looked like tourists, but we didnt care, we just wanted to find our hostel! So one bus ride later, which lasted around 1hour we jumped off hoping we would be there! We wandered some more, then wandered some more and eventually we couldnt take it anymore. We stopped outside a delicious cake shop, although we were NOT in the mood to be eating yummy cakes at this point, we wanted to leave!!! haha. The man in the cake shop was very helpful though, well he seemed it, he may have been cursing us in Chinese for all we know, he seemed very pleasant though. He rang our hostel and wrote down the address so we could 'easily' find it. haha...so again we set off, eventually grabbing a cab, the taxi driver then rang the hostel, again, as he didnt know where it was. Eventually at 7:30pm, after initially arriving in Beijing at 3pm, we found our hostel. Yayy!!

Our hostel used to be an ex-weapons, a factory and an old Chinese prison....sure!! The common room had been completely changed and barely resembled a prison, and then we were taken to what would be our room for the next few nights!..It was just like a prison!! the dark eerie corridor with all the different 'cells' off the dark alley!! lovely place!
Still though it would do us just fine! The location was perfect for what we needed; right in the middle of the old hutong villages and next door to one of the main temples in Beijing and 2 mins walk from a subway station. Not expecting it to take us 4 hours to find the place, that took up most of our day so we were just pleased to be at the hostel, chilled out and had some noodles...yummy!!
Throughout our time in Beijing we had visited sooooo many places! We finally found the local bus for the Great Wall! which took a while to work out but in the end we were well chuffed with ourselves! and we didn't need to waste our money doing it on a tour and no doubt sharing the wall with 50 other people, wearing red hats and following a woman with a megaphone and a flag!! the 1hour bus journey was pretty cool, being the only non-chinese people and nobody speaking a word of English!we found a way of communicating with people...whilst they're busy looking at us, either thinking 'what are these guys doing on 'our' bus', or 'why hasn't she got black hair the freak' or probably thinking 'the guns on that guy are insane!' we would just reply with a smile and then they'd give us a huge grin back and they seemed to kind of respect us and accept that we were on their bus and we weren't going anywhere...and if they did have a problem with it, well I don't need to spell out what the guns would've done do i!

We got dropped off by the bus and then had to get an 'illegal' taxi to take us the last part to the wall, and at first having an argument with the guy thinking he was trying to con us, we took his word for it and he took us directly to the wall, and told us he would wait for us to come down and then take us back to the bus stop! He looked on drugs, and had a nervous twitch in his head which was a bit offputting when speaking to him, not to mention a little bit drangerous...twitching whilst driving!!...that would explain why he didn't have a real taxi! He also had a very square head, the kind of haircut that seems ludicrous but has caught on a lot out here, where their head is already pretty much a square but they get their hair cut which only compliments that square a bit too well!! nevertheless he was a good guy...

The Great Wall of China...what more can I say...One of the most amazing constructions in the world! with each wall strategically placed around the mountains as a lookout as well as a shield to prevent the oncoming invaders from entering. 1 of the 7 Ancient wonders of the world and it was easy to see how. Climbing up to the wall was a mission, we must have climbed 200 steps atleast, Sarah in her sandals and I was in my walking boots (converse) and they conquered the wall just fine!!
Every steep drop in the wall was then joined with an even steeper uphill part! with 22 watch towers and on the 23rd, the wall was covered and being torn apart by the roots of trees and all sorts growing from within the wall! I think it's fair to say that it was exhausting work, especially as it was ridiculously hot! it made each step that bit harder!!
The best part was the fact that there was literally nobody on the wall!! it was paradise, me, Sarie and the wall, all on our own...the exact reason why we didn't get a tour.

We also visited the Forbidden city which we got in at the 2nd attempt! the first time we arrived we missed the closing time by about 10 mins. When we got in, it was soo impressive!! typical Chinese style buildings, with the corners of each pavillion curling up. After 5 massive areas, all seperated with a massive gate we got to the prettiest area where these beautiful buildings were set in a garden. The only thing that ruined it was the tourists or should I say the tours! why do you need a tour to take you to the forbidden city!!?its in the middle of the city!!..red caps everywhere and flags slowly filling the areas! We started to play escape from the tours as they were like stampeeds. To fully appreciate the size of the Forbidden city and the number of buildings there are in the complex, we climbed the hills in JingShan park where you can see over the whole of the city and the view is impressive...WOAH!! were our words!!...along with more exhaustion from yet more steps!

In the evening we also had a list of things to visit, the first night we went to the Night market, firstly the food market, which sold scorpions, seahorses, octopus and starfish.
After trying Pig's ear, Chicken foot and pig skin in Hong Kong I gave scorpion a go and it wasn't as bad as you would think!! They fry it first so the tail is nice and crispy and then you bite the main body, and you get a really warm goo, just like a soother...and if you keep the image of a soother in your head and not the guts of a scorpion, its all good!...for a moment I felt like me and Bear Grylls had something in common!! Eating strange things and staying at an ex prison...just how travelling is supposed to be!!
One evening we caught the subway to the 2008 Beijing Olympics Birds nest stadium and the Aqua cube. The whole park was full at 9pm with people flying kites etc and the stadiums were sweeeeeeett!!! easily the best stadium I've been to, all the more impressive at night too when lit up

The Summer Palace was pretty special, set on a huge lake in a massive park, we could have spent a whole day there, the weather was boiling and it was so relaxed, a bit like the hutong villages in the way that you could escape the fast tempo of the city, although not lucky enough to get away from the red caps, however we did manage to get away from them for the majority of the time! so far the Chinese have lived up to my expectations, where I thought they were crazy little people, literally little where me and even Sarie were probably one of the tallest!...that hasn't happened since primary school!
To confirm that they lived up to our expectations, it wasn't until we got to the park where the Temple of Heaven was, in the 'long corridor' where it was full of lunatics!! dancing around to a recorder...horrible noise, and then a woman would suddenly jump up and start singing, shreiking like a dying cat it was horrific!! me and sarie just turned to each other and thought "crazy chinese!" also they sold the most pointless things you could ever want, such as a bird whistle that even the old men buy and walk around trying to make bird noises. On the other hand I have seen 1 thing so far that I was so close to buying!...some funny glasses with a nose attached to them, and a moustache attached to the nose. And when you blow out of the nose, the moustache then got bigger like those whistles you have a parties! pure genius!!
The Temple of Heaven itself was awesome, a huge cone shaped building in the middle of a square. The structure didn't use any cement to build it which was pretty impressive, and the temple is still being used, hence why it has all been restored, another great place to visit.

One thing we weren't sure about was the fact that all the babies wore trousers which had a huge slit in the middle for their waddler to hang out of as well as their bum! it was a bit strange...Apparently it's so they can go to the toilet whenever they like, but this still didn't add up for us....we thought if they're sitting on their mother's lap or in her arm, and they decide to either wee or poo, surely these trousers would make the whole thing a worse scenario!! not to mention the mess it would make on the mother! yeah the kid would be ok but wouldn't a nappy solve all problems!? On the bus a lady had a kid with his waddler hanging out, me and sarah start sniggering like the mature adults we are, and the mother cups her hand over it to cover it!...what if he then went for a wee!!!? honestly....only the chinese hey!

We could have spent ages in Beijing as there was just so much to see as well as beer being 18p a can!! But it was time we moved on to the next City so we booked our train tickets to Xi'An...Our first impression of China is a positive one. Pretty amazing, very modern but still very cheap!

I Love Hong Kong

After 2 flights (having to fly back to Delhi, to then catch our flight to Hong Kong) we arrived at 7am. Mind you we were quite happy to be on those flights and wouldn't have complained if they had lasted longer. Our first flight to Delhi was faultless and possibly the best 1 hour flight we've ever been on. Our ticket said we got an inflight snack. Thinking this would be a tiny pack of peanuts like usual where after about 2 mouthfuls they're gone; we were hit back with a big surprise! The flight attendants start handing out chicken tikka and malai kofta for Sarah!...and as if that wasn't enough they were handing out free beer! Chicken Tikka washed down with a can of ice cold Kingfisher! heaven. After our "snack" we looked out of the window to be greeted by Mount Everest, and before we knew it our empty beer cans had been taken and replaced with full ones!...'3 free beers each' apparently!...Sweet!! We had our own televisions, with cable tv, so I sat and watched the Championship play-off final whilst Sarah watched Friends....what an awesome flight.
The second was just as impressive and you still got your 3 free beers, or you could trade the beer in for a whiskey and coke for example or as Sarah opted for; a glass of white wine! real wine...not local wine!! real white wine!

Anyways as we collected our bags, we made way for the phone to wake Nick up and let him know that we had arrived and were going straight to the 'hotel' to get some sleep but would meet up with him and the others later that evening.
We got to our hotel, the 8th floor with a window overlooking the main Nathan Road so we couldn't complain, it was hot, humid and dry. Once we stepped out of the building into the main street, it was chaos, and that's when it hit me...."Shit"...I had that feeling I got when I first went to Manchester...All the buildings are really tall, everyone seems to know where they're going and then there was me, feeling way too small for this big city, not having a clue which way to go, too busy dodging to get out of everyone's path....I felt lost and wished I was back in India or Nepal where over the past 2 months I had felt in my comfort zone. I guess Hong Kong was like stepping back in the modern world again, so as we stood in the middle of the path taking it all in, we decided to walk down towards the harbour. Everywhere we walked, it always seemed that we typically were walking against the grain, making each step that bit harder trying not to walk into anybody!

Over the 10 days of being in Hong Kong we had got the hang of it and slowly started walking with the grain....so much easier!! We headed down to the Harbour where we walked along the avenue of stars, also giving you the amazing view of the famous Hong kong Skyline, and it really was AMAZING!! Then we had the fun of looking for a cheap chinese restaurant down a few backstreets where none of the menus were in English so we had to quickly learn cantonese to get some noodles! Luckily a lady came out and showed us what each one was with a picture! so as soon as she pointed to the noodles, we nodded and our order was placed.

After we had settled in to Hong Kong we rang around to see when we would meet up with our old disney friends. I got through to Fred and he told us that a table was booked for tea and everyone was meeting at 7. The restaurant was a bit swanky! but surprisngly the price was right! We ordered all kinds of things, that I can't remember the name of, and the others ordered dishes of typical chinese food so we could try. Jellyfish was one of them, which tasted a bit strange! and then I found out I had ordered pig's skin, Vicky decided to tell me this AFTER i had eaten it!!
We had an amazing evening, and had arranged with to meet them all on the weekend where, on saturday we planned to go to a traditional chinese lunch in central and then meet up with everyone else and go to the peak before heading for some tea. and sunday we had been invited to go to a beach BBQ on the beach of Shek O on Hong kong Island. We couldn't wait!

The following day we decided to catch a ferry and head to Lantau Island and see the largest outdoor buddha in the world as well as the Po Lin monastery before heading to Tai O, (Venice as Fred reffered to it haha) a little fishing village, where all the houses lined a river, on stilts around a market full of seafood. It was amazing and so was the weather, really really hot. As we arrived to Tai O we were stopped by a lady who wanted us to help with her daughter's English homework assignment. We checked over the grammar and changed it so in theory she should get 100%... hah yeah right.
As the lady thanked us for our help she then told us she didn't think we were English and thought we were German!!!! if she had said that before we had helped her I would have chucked the assignment back at her and told her where to shove it!

The weekend came and we had been looking forward to it! So we met with everyone and they took us to a traditional restaurant for lunch. It was heaving!! so we had to share a table with some others! Me and Sarah thought this was a bit weird, opting to wait until they had finished but they just laughed! it's not a problem to share tables apparently, that's what they do over here!! The menu was also an experience!...trolleys go round, each trolley containing a different dish to the other and when that trolley passes your table you either let it pass if you don't want that dish or you call out for it to stop if you do want it. Exchanged with a stamp on your bill with what dish you had!
It was pretty cool! a pretty awesome experience we would never have known about if it wasn't for our friends! They then showed us around Hollywood road, where we found Man Mo Temple which we stopped in. After learning about their prayers, the sticks in the jar and how to do it, we lit some incense and gave it a go! It was good fun!
We headed to Times Square and then decided we would head towards the peak. The rain had come unfortunately so we turned back and went to the space museum before heading to the hotpot restaurant! When they mentioned a hotpot I was expecting a nice english lamb hotpot! instead we got a stove in the middle of the table full of soup, then on a trolley they bring all your ingredients, such as chicken, pork, meat as well as all your vegetables which you put in the soup and cook it yourself! We had one bowl of Fish soup, another of chilli soup for those who were feeling a bit wild! and then a tomato soup to add all the ingredients to! We were there until 11.30 and ate the whole time we were there so I'd say we got our moneys worth!

The next day was the beach BBQ!! :) We met at the station next to Wing's home, went to buy the meat and vegetable and then caught a bus to the beach. Although it was spitting with rain, our bbq was covered so we didn't get wet. We got the charcoal, lit the fire and the started preparing the food! It was like being at a campfire. You each have a BBQ fork and put whatever you want to eat on the end, and then hold it in the fire to cook it! once its ready you then paste it with honey and then eat it...SO SO YUMMY!!! Pork chops were beautiful! The beach itself was really cool, not to mention I could actually play football for the first time since we left, and had someone to play with! what more could I ask for!! It was great! We stayed at the beach until around 9 o clock before we had all eaten too much and were ready to head back.
We had had such an amazing weekend, but all our friends had to get back to work the next morning.
Wing and Nova thought I looked like David Beckham which was a compliment considering the day before Sarah was calling me jimmy Neutron!! Jimmy to Beckham overnight can't be bad!!....Although Fred and Nick explained why they thought this...."They think you look like Beckham, like when you see chinese people from the back, you probably think we all look like Jackie Chan!?"......I replied..."noooo!...not at all!!!" hahah he'd nailed it!

We picked up our Chinese visas from the embassy the next day after booking our tickets to Beijing for friday! (we decided to stay longer as we were lovin it here, and didn't want to leave any sooner than we had to!) The next few days we met Bonnie every evening who would take us to different places for tea, as well as order for us! We were slowly getting the hang of chopsticks and were verging on being pro's when it came to eating dry noodles! not those in a soup though, that was a different kettle of fish!
On wednesday everyone had rung in sick for the afternoon so we could continue to play in Hong Kong! We met in Mong Kok, where they informed us, was the best place for markets and shopping in general so we headed to the famous Fa Yuen street, the Ladies market and the goldfish market! Sarah was in heaven! grabbing a bargain in Fa Yuen and the Ladies Market, and then looking at all the different fish tied in plastic bags and hung up for you to pick which one you wanted to buy! It was pretty impressive!
We then got some noodles from the street, where i could try pig's ear and headed to a mall to take some sticker photo's with us and our friends!!..some of the poses were a work of art!! We finished off another great day in another rather swanky restaurant!

On our last day we went back to Mong Kok as Sarah had fallen in love with it the day before to walk around, and also found the Tim Ho Wan restaurant which was the cheapest michelin star restaurant in the world! When we got there, there wasn't as many people queing outside as we had expected, so we went for a closer look, and found a sign on the door; 'Register closed until 4pm'. Those people waiting had already got their tickets, number 63 was in having their meal and these were number 107!! and if we wanted to get a meal there we would have to wait an hour and a half just to get a ticket and then probably wait a few hours more before we even got in! so we were happy to take a menu for our diary and get a picture outside of it, before heading back to the markets and having a cup of tea with honey chips!! We then made our way back to Tsim Sha Tsui (TST) to get ready for a last meal with our friends. We went back to the swanky reataurant from the first night and this time we could use our chopsticks!! without them waiting on us, taking hours to eat our meal! We also picked up some cantonese so we could join in...a little bit!! We had taught them some english slang! and we could also order food and know what we were getting....a bit different to that, 10 days ago. I decided to go for chicken's feet to give that a try...not too bad!! if you forget you're eating a foot and tell yourself its just chicken, you get through it!! The evening was a great laugh and we didn't want to leave.

To end our time in Hong kong we all went down to the 1881 heritage and got a 'pro' photographer to take a picture of us all, which took a long time until we had perfected it!! Then we said goodbye as everyone parted their own way home. We will miss our Hong Kong friends a lot and had an amazing 10 days.

P.S. We are currently writing this on our train to Beijing, which i must say is a step up from those in India! similar as there were still 6 beds per cabin and sadly back to the squat and drop toilets!! On the other hand we got probably the comfiest bed we've had in all 11 weeks, with an actual duvet!!! Our first impression of the chinese people is a good one, after the lady stayin in the same compartment as us bought us each tea, and the people in the compartment next to us gave us some of their orange!! We had deja vu from the trains in India where everyone would go out of their way to make sure we were having a good journey and weren't going without anything.

Back to the Modern World

After travelling around India and eventually being able to travel round Nepal, there was quite a big contrast between the countries. The people for one roll a lot different in Nepal than India, and Nepal seems more Tibetan than Indian with it's everyday life and culture; probably because of the Himalayas.
The only similarities the countries have is they both serve Indian food and have no electricity for the better part of each day! So far, we have only stayed in 2 places where there is constant electricity, these being in big Cities like Delhi and Mumbai; everywhere else has a maximum 12hours of electricity per day.
Another similarity is that anywhere outside the big cities don't have mains water, they have a well or a pump tap which they cart to and fro with empty and full water bottles.



The cities in India like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore are all similar to those Cities we've visited in our previous trip round Southeast Asia such as Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh whereby they are all under construction for new western high rise buildings and all are pure and utter chaos whether its with motorbikes or people!!
Kathmandu gives you a different feel, although you're in the capital city you still feel like you're in a rural area.
The people here are a lot more laid back, than in India where you get hassled pretty much non-stop (we found out it's not rude to ignore them so it died down for a bit when we started that!) but you do get used to it, and after a few weeks you don't notifce it as much, to when you first arrive.
With india, we found that the majority of people are really nice but there was a certain type that you had to watch out for; if people talk to you and seem almost too friendly, they're either gay or want something. They'll pretend they dont and then try and charge you once you've taken it (e.g. a guy on our boat in Varanasi took a lotus flower to put in the river because the man said it was free, then he set it off in the water and he was asking for money!) or they are trying to fleece you into visiting their shop!

In Nepal they are friendly and want to help you out, if we're walking round looking lost, they'll come over and help us out. Everywhere you walk, people call out "namaste" to us and want a little chinwag.
With it's mini villages or tibetan communities within walking distance from the main city you could get away from all the chaos for half a day, whereas if you wanted to get away from the chaos in Delhi etc, you would have to get a local bus (if squeezing 10,000,000 people on a tiny minibus, with a mixed smell of fumes and BO is how you like it) out of the city!
Although you get a rural feel, that's not to say there is no chaos (like Vientiane). The traffic in Kathmandu (once the strike finished) however was a different story so much that we got a face mask (without looking like a lemon) to walk around in! Crossing the road is an art over here, so we used our tactic from SE Asia where we follow the locals and cross when they cross...a few near misses and getting clipped by the ridiculous amount of stuff they try and carry on their mopeds, we had made it to the other side!

The transport works in India's favour though! I'll give them credit for that! Although some of our train journeys were a bit of a nightmare, it was mainly our fault for trying to get away with having the wrong tickets and hope the instructor had some "compassion" to let us off. The trains were only the odd hour late with their arrivals, you got a bed which was relatively comfortable, which converts into a chair in the day for a somewhat comfy ride. You could also get a train to almost anywhere which was handy especially when we changed our plans and decided we'd go from Varanasi across to the other side at Mumbai.




The public transport in Nepal, was a little bit different! The little buses were ok, but when it came to the 6-7 hour bus rides to and from places, the buses were rickety old things! sounding like they weren't going to make it half the time. We had a hard seat, 9 times out of the 10 the seat recliner wouldn't work so you have to sit upright on a hard as nails seat, whilst the Nepali guy in front of you had a seat where the recliner seemed not only to work but to work too well! His head was almost in my lap!
The Buses had no suspension, although you're sitting high up, you feel every stone we drove over and it feels like its going to tip the bus....Not to mention the windy mountain roads! On our way back from Chitwan we saw a lot of crashes! A lorry had gone into someone's house on the mountain cliff! and another bus had flipped onto its back!Overtaking on hairpin bends is not the cleverest idea unless you had a deathwish...but we kept doing it, every corner when we got behind a lorry!
Chitwan failed to have any sturdy houses not to mention rickshaws, tuk-tuks or taxis and instead used horse and cart, ox-carts or elephants to get around. The houses were made out of mud and bamboo! The horse and cart ride was an experience! the bags are up at the front with the driver facing the horse whilst me and Sarah were tucked in the back of the carriage facing the floor! any slight bumps or hills and we would have been straight out of the back face down on the track!





Kathmandu seems a lot poorer than most cities we've been to, where there is no sign of any western style buildings undergoing constructions or even planning, all streets are little back lanes with the front of everyone's house becoming a mini shop in the day, and a home at night. Whether it sells cooking utensils, or chopped up pieces of meat (Sarah saw a woman throw a pigs head on the table the other day for her husband to start chopping up, so I'm keeping off meat at the moment!) to massive sacks of chillis!
India seems to have a reputation for being dirty and yeah Delhi is dirty...so are big cities in any country. You also ask yourself do you really go to India expecting it to be all squeaky clean?do you travel to the less developed world and expect it to be all spotless? If we wanted to visit really clean places, we'd stay at home. One thing we did notice was how people think India is all disgustingly dirty etc, but in comparison to Nepal, we have seen a lot worse in Kathmandu (some little kids playing with dead rats in the sewage gutters at the side of the road!)




The prices for alcoholic beverages in Nepal was ridiculous! You can get a bottle of local wine for 60p, and a barrel of tongba (Tibetan beer) for 50p!! that won Nepal over right from the word go!!
Although, we thought we were getting wine and beer when we ordered 'a bottle of local wine' and a 'tongba'....how wrong could we be.
The wine was served in a used beer bottle which they poured into our empty water bottle! We had a smell and it smelt like vodka!...asking the guy what was in the wine he replied 'a little bit of wine, and a lot of vodka...very strong'...it made tesco value vodka smell like smirnoff!! but 75cl's worth for 60p!! BARGAINS!

On the menu tongba (Tibetan beer) was under the 'liquor' section and not the 'beer' section....thinking thats a bit strange he walks out with a massive flask of boiling water and a mini wooden barrel (about 500ml) full of millet :S some tiny seeds. You pour the hot water in and leave it for a few minutes before you drink.You do this 4 times....each time you do it it gets stronger and stronger in the alcoholic content!...This tasted far from beer, it started off tasting like Mulled wine and after the 2nd refill it started to taste really strong! I felt fine, then I stood up!! Definately a winner!! Apparently its used like we use brandy in england, in the winter, to warm the ol' cockels!.



India had it's own honey bee brandy which was £1.50 for a massive litre bottle which was a good contender, and I never thought I'd say Honey bee could be beaten as it was that good! but it has to take demotion to 2nd place I'm afraid...

So far 2 countries down, and we loved them both, how India had everything you could need and just as you thought you had seen it all, you moved to the next place and it was completely different, and then moving into the mountainous scene of Nepal - the country with the live goddess, the country with so many monkeys they're like vermin, with the locals spending most of their day with a catapult firing nuts at them!
One things for sure, we're going to miss paying £2-£3 (between us) every night for a room!!!
...nevertheless we're looking forward to meeting our Hong Kong friends from disney finally! who have promised to and show us around the Hong Kong so it should be good!!

Chitwan

So after a long, hot and very bumpy bus ride to Chitwan, taking 7hours on a dirt track consisting of rocks and stones: wide enough for one veichle only, we arrived to be greeted by yet more pesky taxi drivers trying to persuade us to go to their hotel. I straight away spotted the Gaida Lodge sign and headed towards the guy, saying how much are your rooms. After he replied 300...I said "Dom we are staying here". I was happy at how quick and how stress free this was...unlike Pokhara!! So we loaded our bags into the jeep and set off to the lodge. After settling in, we were told we were getting a free 'nature walk' around Chitwan by the guy who met us at the bus park...we thought ahh cool!!...So 4:30pm came and we were met by Mr Wildlife himself...he was sporting some binoculas and a "Birds of Nepal" book...it was...yes....a bird watching walk!! hahaha!! We thought this was rather funny and we were very much up for it, well I did, I thought the times when Rach and I used to birdwatch outside my bedroom window would finally pay off. He seemed a cool guy and showed us the Elephant stables and Thaura huts, which were built out of mud and sticks. A small dog was following us and when we asked if it was his, he casually replied "No...but the dogs know me round here!!"...Hmm...Cool!! We reached the fields and were seperated from the jungle by a small river, the bird watching began. He was showing us the sand martins, purple herons, red whiskered bulbuls, cuckoos, woodpeckers (Dom spotted that one) and the crested serpant eagles...he gave us each the chance to get a closer look through his bino-clas...(he pronounced it that way)...although only one eye worked, but we were able to borrow his telescope if we wanted to take bird watching to the next level!!! We thought some new bird had been discovered when Mr Wildlife fell over trying to get a glimpse of this "amazing" bird...we were also excited at the thought of what bird we might have seen...we enquired..."What was that?"...he replied, in a heap on the floor, "Ahh that was a pigeon"...we were a little dissapointed to say the least. This bird watching mularkey turned into a pretty awesome adventure after we had seen a wild elephant crossing the river. Next thing we know, Mr Wildlife and I spotted two wild rhinos across the river about 15yards from us. Mr Wildlife was soooooo amazed, he wanted pictures...for his website (which didnt exist yet). He wasnt interested in taking pictures for us...it was all about him and his webpage!! One moment later, he was running towards the rhinos...flip flops off...shorts hiked up...bird book on the floor...crossing the river, for a "closer" look. He was up the cliff on the opposite side to us, he must have been about 10cm away from the rhinos head, he had his phone out snapping away. It was hilarious, he definatley wasn't concerned with saftey, eventhough he hid everytime the rhino looked up.

A few minutes later we bumped into fellow bird watchers, who had also spotted the rhinos...Jon and Eliza!! An Indian couple, who were teachers, he was a headmaster who had retired and she was a teacher...just a normal teacher, as Jon kept reminding us! He was very enthusiastic and wanted a picture with us after 2minutes of introudicing himself. His video camera was rolling the whole time...he got his guide to film us getting introduced to Jon and Eliza. This video, we later found out, was heading to the Discovery Channel...Jon must have thought the amateur video would have been good enough.

Our bird watching walk ended with us watching the sunset over the river. It was amazing and so peaceful. We could get used to this all too easily.





Day two, we headed to the river to bathe with the elephants. We got escorted down by another wildlife fanatic from our lodge, who imitated bird noises for us, and attempted to point them out, although half the time they had flown off but he hadnt noticed. He was a cool guy, Dom had a connection with him after he shard his love for football...bless!! Once at the river was got straight on the elephant...Pooja....she was sooo big, she was amazing. The guy from the lodge offered to take some pictures for us...good job he came to show us the way!! After being drenched in water and tipped off it was time up. I managed to squeeze in another go before we left though.

Day three was a packed day for us. We had a elephant safari in the morning and a jeep safari in the afternoon, all through the jungle and across the river. Our elephant safari was a 7:30am start, we set off for our 2 hour trek. We were deep in the jungle getting battered by branches and leaves, covered in spiders and bugs...and huge massive red stick insect type things...our elephant made her own pathway half the time. She generally ate her way through the leaves and trees for us to get through!! After being dragged through one rather large tree Dom's flip flop fell off, as we couldnt really stop and get off...well I wouldnt of incase a tiger ate us, we told our driver, who didnt speak English. He grunted a little and next thing our elephant had picked up the flip flop with her trunk and lifted it up to us. Pretty cool. We saw loads of wildlife...monkeys and elephants, deer and pigs and loads of different birds. We didnt manage to spot a sloth bear or a tiger though. Before we knew it we were on our way back and our ride was over :-(

After a quick lunch, we were back heading to the river, ready for our jeep safari which would last 4hours!!!! It was so hot and we had no water. Our hotel friend told us to make sure we didnt sit at the back, as this was the place you got covered in dust...we literally power walked our way to the front of the jeep...it was like a race, and just at the end as we were about to get on, we got overtaken by everyone else (I dont know how this happened) who got the good seats and I got the back!!!...I thought surely I cant get that covered in dust, we were going through the jungle...its grass!!...wrong...1hour into it, I was caked in dust. My whole back was covered and I now looked a slightly darker shade of brown. We took so many pictures and saw five rhinos, more monkeys and more deer and more different types of birds. We were all detirmed to see a tiger, but it didnt happen, which was a shame. Our jeep safari ended and it was great to have been able to go through the jungle both on an elephant and on the back of a jeep.

Flying with the Eagles

After settling in and making ourselves at home in our rather luxury hotel (compared to what we've been used to) we decided to go to Devi's Falls on our way to the World Peace Pagoda on top of the mountain overlooking the Phewa Lake.
Devi's Falls was a waterfall which went underground a bit like the one in Hampi, but the part that was not underground was pretty impressive. Although after hearing and reading that it was in a cave and very eerie we were expecting somethiing a little bit more than what we got...who were we kiddin' though, with an entrance fee of 20Rps it was never gonna be anything unbelievable. Still we had been an seen and it was on the way so we were glad we had gone. Well at this point we thought it was on the way, until it turned out that the walk to the Pagoda that we had read saying was a 20min walk turned into a 2hour hike...3km all uphill! and it was boiling...and to top things off we were climbing a mountain with me in my converse and Sarah in her primark pumps, which were too small!...With a bottle of water which by the time we wanted to drink, it was hot!
Nevertheless we carried on. We had misread it, and the walk which takes you to the Pagoda from the waterfall was the 'scenic route' and yeah it was estimated as a 2hour walk...oops
Sarah was not best pleased, with her feet in agony but we stuck to our guns and made it to the top!! Then someone perked up a bit!! very happy that they had made it to the top!...the views were amazing, on a ridge of a mountain. 1 way you look over the City and the surrounding mountains, the otherside you see the massive Phewa Lake and lakeside.





After we had spent a while looking at the pagoda and taking in the views etc, we made for our way back down!...This was worse than going uphill, as we thought we'd go a different way - through the forest and then catch a rowing boat across the lake back to lakeside (where our hotel was). Basically a half made path down the side of the mountain! Pretty steep! getting down only took us about an hour and then we got to chill out as a guy rowed us across the lake.
We headed straight back to the hotel and put our flip-flops back on...Sarah mumbling to herself how she 'hates trekking' and shes going to write on her pumps 'I hate trekking in too small shoes when its hot'...that is still yet to happen though so I think we may just get one more wear out of them!





The next day we had arranged with a taxi to pick us up at 4.45am to take us up to the Sarangkot viewpoint to see the sunrise over the Annapurna mountains..This meant getting up at silly o clock...4.15am - ridiculous but we managed it. and although the driver was a bit of a head case, we were literally on the edge of mountains and he was flying!....that's put another contender for who the Stig might be.
Watching the sun come up was amazing! the view of the mountains was great and as the sun slowly rised, the tip of each mountain slowly got covered with cloud. We were joined by 3 Americans but Sarah swore blind that they were Irish...1 of which was fairly large of which Sarah instantly thought 'I bet she snores'...bless her. They did keep taking pictures where they would 'pose' right in front of our view which was nice.
After we had a cup of chai and were happy with our snaps, we got back in our taxi to go back to our hotel, where we went straight back to sleep for a few hours..That trip pretty much made us knackered for the whole day so we thought we'd just chill out...and shopping, again getting nothing...APART from booking my paragliding flight for the following morning.

That morning came and it was strange, i wasn't nervous at all I just wanted to get up there and do it...As we drove up a mountain in a jeep, they still hadn't told us what we need to do for take off and landing, instead decided to tell us just as we were actually taking off!..sure.
As he strapped me up with my harnass and put my little red helmet on (what a lemon!) it was like I was a kid again where you get dressed by your mother! But we got all set up and he just told me to run off the edge of the mountain!!
With a bit of luck we started to rise instead of fall, and I could sit back in my luxury seat! On the back of my harnass was a big seat so that when I got in the seat position I had an armchair to kick back into! Camera in 1 hand as I got a panoramic view of the whole Pokhara Valley...the Annapurnas to my left and the Phew Lake to my right.
We were flying along with these massive eagles just above from us. I could actually have some idea how it felt to be a bird for a while!...it was better than I could've imagined







I was having a moment up there!! Sarah had had one when we were rowing on the lake and now I was having one when i was up in the sky struggling to take it all in, it suddenly hit me, realising where I was; In Nepal amongst snowcapped mountains... paragliding, living the dream!...I thought working in M&S for 2 years was living the dream but this had raised the stakes a bit!
I thought this guy (my pilot) has the best job in the world, doing this everyday...
Then we were coming into land where we landed next to the lake and again, he told me to slide out of my seat, so i was prevented from falling out by a few clips, if this was in India I would have fallen! the clips wouldn't be working or something but I put my faith in this guy and we landed safely! My pilot turned round to me and said "during the flight I looked around at you and I could see you were having a moment" even he could tell!....we left all the equipment on the floor and these little kids ran over sorting it all out....I'm glad I found this out after i had done it than before, knowing that 2 little kids not much older than about 7years old had sorted our parachute out!




Once the others landed (2 Brazilian girls) we went to a restaurant for a drink while the jeep made its way to pick us up. These 2 Brazilian girls had MASSIVE Cameras and numerous lenses and luckily took some pictures of me before, during and after my flight offering to send me them via email! :-).