Back to China, onwards to Vietnam

All Visaed up, back we go to China via Shenzen and on to Guangzhou to pick up a train to the island of Hainan off the south coast. An unscheduled stop in Guangzhou due to ticket shortages led to a dingy, windowless room and a night of KFC, nasty people and rain. Bliss.

Finally making it to Hainan we took the train to the southern tip of the island after crossing the straits on the train that was first shunted onto a boat. Oddness. Sanya is a bit of a tourist trap with overdeveloped beaches aimed at tourists from the mainland and Russia, handy enough because we could order stuff and ask for the bill in Russian but a pain when the entire tout population of the island chases after you with shouts of "Drastvutye". Picked up a car for the first few days to explore the coast, no rules-of-the-road or signposts hindered progress somewhat but we did a bit although our dream of surfing on China's best surf beaches were quashed by a timely typhoon. Fantastic waves but a tad out of our league. After a relaxing week of sunburn, burgers and sposiba-sposiba, off we headed to Haikou (pronounced High-Coe) on the north of the island to pick up a boat back to the mainland. A night in Haikou turned out to be a blessing. Cute little hostel with pool, pingpong, DVDs, good grub and a gorgeous if slightly bickering pairing of a dalmation and something approximating a basset hound.

After a single night in Haikou we headed off to the ferry port to get the boat to Beihai. The simple task of ticket buying and boat boarding turned out to be a tad more complicated than we thought. Ticket counter was easy enough, gesticulating and pointing did the job as usual. We were then pursued by random-man-in-white-shirt-who-likes-shouting (a constant fixture in Asia when you're trying to do something, we'll call him "RMIWSWLS") who tried to get us on a bus. Eh, no thanks buddy. After joining a queue to a boat we eventually realised this bus was to the other side of the ferry terminal where we'd be getting on a different boat. Clear as mud. Off we went, watching groups line up and board while people milled around, spitting, smoking and dozing. When it came to our turn we made a move to the departure gate, only for the RMIWSWLS with the megaphone to start barking orders in Chinese, instigating a rush of bodies to the ticket window and a lot of shouting, banging on glass and general mayhem. Boat cancelled? Ferry full? World ending? Who knew.

Eventually the brave Fi makes a move and tries to ask RMIWSWLS what's going on. He looks horrified at our mere presence during this mayhem (we were the only non-Asians there and obviously hadn't a clue what was transpiring) and proceeds to drag Fi through the melee into the caged ticket office, leaving Seamus guarding the bags and hoping the growing riot doesn't extend his way. The shouting only gets louder, at this point a crazed tour group leader is whacking her metal flag off the glass and screaming, and the frenzied crowd watch in disgust as the RMIWSWLS scribbles something on our tickets and takes us through the back door and directs us onto the earlier, already fully loaded boat. Bless his heart, he took enough pity on us to find us what was probably the only free cabin (post-analysing this we realised that no normal people travel without a tour group in China and fitting thirty people into our two man tin can cabin might have been a tad tricky). I didn't envy him the return walk into the terminal to deal with the mob but he kept his cool through it all, there's a reason he was appointed as RMIWSWLS in charge of passenger boarding.

Safely ensconced in our cabin, we tracked down the essentials in the tiny shop. The options extended to vacuum packed mystery meat in mystery sauce, noodle tubs and beer. The beer and noodles won. A makeshift seasickness wristband for Seamus saved the day (TOP TIP- The pressure on the front of the wrist from an inverted watch acts like the usual band on the acupressure point that calms the nausea)

We awoke at dawn on the final approach into Beihai harbour. Slightly rested and still a bit shaken after the adventure of boarding. Departing we followed the crowd into a small terminal building where some darling staff helped us find bus tickets to Dong Xing (pronounced Dong Ching) on the border with Vietnam. 3 hours later and we're in a bright yellow milkcart taking us from the station in Dong Xing to the Border Crossing over a narrow brigde into Mong Cai, Vietnam. The usual mess of queues, forms, checks, double checks, stamps and accusing glares from border guards marks our arrival. They must have forgotten the banners, balloons and streamers.

A negotiation with some cheery taxi drivers left us with the option of spending a fortune on aircon taxi to Halong City further down the coast, a 6(ish) hour bus journey, or our initial plan of staying for a night and getting a high-speed boat down the coast where we would eventually be meeting Paddy. The option involving a bed, food and pleasant boat journey won the day. A guesthouse near the bus station welcomed our custom with the expected greeting of giggles and confusion. Boat tickets sorted and chinese/Vietnamese mix border food hunted and paid for, we settled in to one of our many nights in limbo. Not quite where we want to be or where we thought we'd end up, just another step in the journey.

The morning brought us to a bus which would then bring us to our high-speed, high-tech hydrofoil boat which would whizz us down the beautiful coast to Halong Bay. As they loaded us on to an overcrowded old timber tub we weren't in the least bit surprised. A rough calculation and we figured it would take 10 hours to make the 70km trip, but the woman perched on the bow with a pink petalled face mask offered us mandarines and mystery dried fruit, so it's not all bad. After 40 minutes of chugging into the open ocean we were greeted by the sight of a hydroil, raising itself supremely over the waves as it sped towards us, and as it dropped speed and settled it's hull onto the water we took part in a game of throw the bags and passengers from one rocking boat onto another. Some things just can't be done the easy way.

We sped into Halong City on the edge of the UNESCO World Heritage Site that is the karst limestone islands, bays and inlets of Halong Bay. 1,969 island and nearly as many beaches frame and shelter the island of Cat Ba, Quan Lan and a couple of other inhabited islands in the area. Halong City was enjoying the first day of its annual Carnaval as our boat docked and we made our way on to the pier. We put off the trip to Cat Ba island for a couple of days to soak up the noise, energy, parades and fireworks as this huge city went slightly nuts and partied underneath our harbour-view balcony. Popcorn, Pho and Fishy(photos will come later) all entered our lives as we alternated between trying to find a boat to CatBa, to meet up with Paddy, and watching the great and good of Halong show off their floats, dance moves and costumes.

Come Monday the party was definitely over, the stages and pontoons were wiped away, unveiling the "grimy city" the guidebooks had warned us off. Still enjoying the initial colourful taste of Halong we made our way to Cat Hai on another taxi-boat-ferry-bus adventure that brought us in to Cat Ba town to soak up the beach and party atmosphere as promised.

Costa del Sol in the 1970s was the final judgement. The great and not so good of Vietnam descended en masse to celebrate Liberation Day and Labour Day in quick succession. After booking into a hotel for 2 days we were all booted out after the first night when the charming hotelier decided to accept a more expensive booking over our own. Our newly formed trio was advised that you can rent tents on the beach, take a flying leap if you will. We eventually found a passable guesthouse that would put us up for triple the usual rate and bless us with 6th floor rooms and no lift. Oh my aching thighs.

Cat Ba has little to offer beyond a couple of half-decent restaurants and a free pool table with cheap ales. The assortment of once serene beaches is marred by imposing facilities buildings, touts, umbrellas, Christmas lights and the usual tools of the trade for over-eager tourism development types. Organising a tour out to the bay and getting scammed for as many dollars as you have available are an automatic combination. We opted to hire a couple of kayaks and explore the bay on our own terms. Packed lunches, a cartoon map and lots of paddling later and we found ourselves travelling under huge stone arches, exploring tiny bays between the towering limestone formations and poking around in the rubbish and detritus that marks high tide on the random spits and beaches we came across (UNESCO might want to note that). Tourist boats gawped as we crossed the bay, avoiding the hype and bites of Monkey Island and the other oft-frequented tourist traps. There's nothing like a Tour Group to ruin the sanctity and peace of an otherwise beautiful scene. After 4 hours of paddling we eventually returned to the floating fishing village and gingerly stepped onto dry land. Sore arms, cramped legs and damp clothes, all well-earned with cheesy photos to match.

After a few too many overpriced meals, overpriced rooms and ridiculously early mornings precipitated by noisy Vietnamese visitors, we arranged for another hydrofoil to Hai Phong on the mainland where we would board a train to Hanoi where burgers, lakes, museums and a decidedly waxy Ho Chi Minh waited eagerly for our arrival. The PaddyFiMoose machine never stops turning, never loses will, and never passes up the opportunity to hunt out a bargain room with a big TV for the football and a mini-fridge.

Hong Kong and Macau

So, due to some bad calculationing, we had to (temporarily) ditch the Yangtze river idea and haul our asses to Hong Kong to get some new visas. Oh the joys. Cue a 24-hour, 3-train feast of travel including a night on a tiny bunk 8 feet from the floor of a stench-ridden train carraige. Has to be done. It turns out it wasn't such an unlucky accident after all, giving us a welcome break from China. It's amazing how much you appreciate the little things like an uncensored media and web access, a proper newspaper and some real bread when you can't get them for a while.

HONG KONG

Our time in Hong Kong was mostly spent sitting in visa queues observing the queue-skipping practices of various persons, trying to find cheaper accommodation and knocking back the pints with the locals. People in Hong Kong are laid back, no nonsense, non-starers, generally quite different to their Chinese neighbours. The influence of the British Empire is diluted by the influx of Chinese, a hyperactive international business environment and the general craziness generated by the wealth and prosperity that's evident all around.

Places to stay are many, places you'd want to stay are few. We tried a couple of places recommended by the (increasingly more useless) Lonely Planet guide that turned out to be glorified cupboards crammed with single beds and ancient TVs. Windows are a luxury we can do without apparently. We upped the budget a bit and decided to spend a couple of quality nights in a decent hotel rather than a week in a kip. You only live once, I think.

Lockhart Road on Hong Kong Island turned out to be THE place to get your fix of TexMex, cocktails, massage and all other manner of variably illicit and indulgent items and services. We ended up making a night of it with a couple of local boys whose favourite haunt was a club where the boys are boys and the girls are girls being boys playing girls. Very confusing. Seamus concentrated very intently on a pint of Carlsberg to avoid the creepy, grinning stares.

After all this excitement we managed to arise and go in the morning, collect those all important Chinese visas and head for Macau on a Jetboat. Hong Kong didn't leave the strongest impression with either of us. Shiny. Hectic. People existing at a different pace with a world view worlds apart from most Chinese people we had come across. It's also expensive by any standards, our credit cards were glad to see the back of it.

MACAU

And so, when we had seen all there was to be seen of Hong Kong and drank all the drink we made a bee-line for Macau for a spot of gambling. Well Fiona did. Seamus just wanted to rent a car and go to the beach.

Macau was, and still is, a revelation. After the intensity of China and the manic panic of Hong Kong, we found ourselves in a calm, tree-lined island surrounded by Portuguese colonnades, smiling people, fantastic food and customer service that would make any tourist weep with joy after a month in China.

First stop was the Pousada de Mong-Ha, a hotel complex connected to the IFT, Tourism Training Institute, which was run by the staff and students. Everything from reception to cleaning, dishwashing to cheffing and more is done by students and overseen by tutors. "no tax, no service charge, NO TIPPING" (their emphasis). The end result is top class service from overeager staff for half the price you might pay anywhere else on the island, a quarter what you'd expect to fork out at an equivalent resort in Killarney or Athlone.

If you're not interested in food, don't bother reading the next few paragraphs, otherwise go to the end to see Seamus looking a right plank in a tiny car.

The food in the typically simplistically titled "Education Restaurant" was a touch hit-and-miss but the whole experience made it worthwhile. A nervous wreck in a tux meets you at the door and lets you spell your name for them to confirm the reservation, then shows you to the enormous dining room with views out to the skyline of Macau at dusk. A gaggle of children (most of them couldn't be older than 18) pull out your chair and whack you on the back of the legs as you try to sit down, another opens your napkin with a flourish and manages to swipe it across your face before it settles on your lap, the swot in the group arrives with a wine list and forgets to pass it from my right, drawing muted howls of indignation from the ever-watchful tutor stationed behind. The combination of dramatic theatre and classroom environment make for classic comedy. If a lanky boy with an ill-fitting suit didn't thrust a menu in my face I'd almost have forgotten we were there for the food.

Oh the food. We ended up dining thricely in this restaurant marinated in education. We graduated from a three-course meal with wine on the first night with superb wine selected by a tutor to the taster menu on night the second, culminating in a first class honourable meal on our last night in Macau to revisit the lessons of the previous days. Without going in to the details of each thing on the menu (linky... http://www.ift.edu.mo/restaurant/eng/index.htm) we can confirm that the confit of duck is incredible, the beef fillet is very good and the halibut dish tastes mostly of potato, give it a miss. The pigeon is more trouble than it's worth and the scallops are extremely good as a starter. Top it off with some refreshing pineapple gazpacho and a glass of port as chosen by the maitre d'. For the benefit of anyone who might be considering a meal here, I'll have to add GOOGLE KEYWORDS, MACUA, POUSADA DE MONG-HA, EDUCATION RESTAURANT, YUMMY to get their attention. For a full on starter-main-dessert times 2 with a bottle and a half of red and lashings of port we had to stump up a miserly 500 patacas (Macau dollars) which equates to 39 euro. The expansive taster menu for 2 comes to 450 patacas not including wine, a good introduction to the highlights of the chefs-in-training-hats skillset.

Our guidebook puts it well, "We can't stress enough how smart it is to stay in Macau on any night except Saturday". Brilliant. It's not easy to stay for a week in a place and not encounter a Saturday along the way. Our darling Pousada de Mong-Ha (Pousada meaning "Place of blessed repose" apparently, sounds more like a cemetery to me) had inconsiderately allowed itself to be booked solid for the entire weekend, so off we went in our tiny rental to explore the islands of Coloane and Taipa to the south of Macau proper. Avis generously allow unlimited mileage for the duration of your rental, a shallow concession considering the country is less than 12 kilometres from top to bottom with only 40km of coastline. Saying that, we did manage to rack up 300km in 4 days, exploring every nook and cranny that took our fancy including beaches, reclaimed land, parks and bridges that we hadn't even known existed.

On our initial foray south we stumbled across the Pousasa de Coloane, helpfully located at the bottom of a dead-end track leading to a beach without a single signpost to lend aid to a weary traveller. They put us up for the weekend (we had booked to go back to the first Pousada for a few days the next week, and more of that beef) in style. Balcony over the beach, jacuzzi, pool, restaurant on the terrace. Twas tough. Coloane village itself looks over the narrow strait to China, where the contrast in levels of grime was visible even from a distance. We settled in to a brief existence as layabouts of leisure while scoffing egg tarts in Lord Stow's Bakery and sitting on rocks staring out at the South China Sea.

Our 10 days in Macau ended sooner than we would have wished. It has a gnawing charm that will surely beckon us back at some stage. It suffers the same fate as Hong Kong when it comes to attracting long term travellers, prices too high with no hostels to speak of, but we would recommend Macau to anyone as an exotic alternative to the Canaries or the Ring of Kerry.

1,321,851,888 people, One country

CHINA

Beijing

Beijing is a city geared up for one thing only - The Olympics. Everything is focusing on making the place bright and shiny and non-confrontational place for the games. They are cleaning the air, and doing a very good job of it, cleaning the streets, stopping the spitting(well..) and generally removing everything that doesn't say 'shiny shiny Olympics, great city, fantastic!'....
They are also trying very hard to make things too old to demolish look shiny and new; the great wall, terracotta warriors and even the remnants of their city wall. But, if you dig deep enough you can find the good old spitty, dog-on-a-stick real China. This might mean following snacking school-children to holes in the wall for mystery food or braving the almost museum-piece decrepit Hutongs but when you do it is all good.

Xi'an

Xi'an is a lovely city, with the 14km of original city walls intact, making for a very interesting walk or bike-ride if you are up to it. The place is full of history(having been the capital for yonks) and has loads to do in- and outside the city including a big unexcavated tomb full of mercury which all the locals said was a pile of poo(my words, not theirs) but it beat the warriors for us because it hadn't had the 'Beijing treatment' and was still full of mystery told a much better story than the warriors. We did get to see the man who found the terracotta warriors though!yey!

We stayed with Rong, Xizhong and YingYing in their beautiful apartment on the campus of Xidian university. We were treated to all the realness of living as a Chinese family, be that with a little more meat and probably a lot more eating out. The food was amazing, lots and lots of mystery meat that became not so mystery meat mid-munch thanks to YingYings good vocab! (pointing at stomach and smiling does not always mean yummy)

We did get to try some Xi'an dishes that even the most accomplished culinary geniuses could never figure out (well, we couldn't)

Enter restaurant, request food
Empty bowl and bread given
....
break bread into tiny little pieces and return bowl full of breadcrumbs to waitress
....
Bowl will return full of noodles, soup, meat and hiding at the bottom your broken up bread bits - delish! (Just make sure your hands are clean for that one)

Other culinary delights included various meats, veggies, maybe some fish, floating in a bubbling bath of the hottest Sichuan chilies and peppers. Oh and lots and lots of tasty meat on sticks!

We also had Paddy's day in Xian which was, well, interesting as there are no Irish people in Xian and definitely no Irish pubs and it was just wrong to go to and English pub so it was live Chinese music and back to the apartment at a half reasonable hour. (we made up for that one in the first Irish pub we found after Xian)


Chengdu

We managed to see all of 'none' of Chengdu thanks to a far too comfortable (if noisy) and cheap hostel with the all important pool table, cheap beer, good company, comfy couches and of a bit of Tibet controversy thanks to an Associated Press journalist. The Loft hostel definitely gets the thumbs up from us.

We managed a few hotpots without the guide of Rong et al. The first one was comical, the pictures should explain.

We ended up with eggs and stomach lining from an unknown animal.

The second was the trusty 'pick your own stuff on a stick' from what can only be described as a 'food on a stick' library?!? We got a few very odd looks but at least we knew what we were doing, kinda!

When we did manage to tear ourselves away from the hostel's immediate surroundings we headed straight for the Irish bar, although the Guinness was about 7Euro, the Jameson was great and we ended up playing in a pool tournament (kinda) with two Irish guys, a girl from the Basque country(who loved Fiona's little bit of Basque) an Aussie whose cousin lives next door to one of the Irish guys in Dundalk, a 1/4 Irish, 1/4 Chinese and half Scottish guy from London and his friend and George, the resident Chinese pool shark (who beat us all at pool, except for Fiona)(yey!)

Later on (around 5am), we drifted to the 'stage' to play piano, drums, some darts and before leaving we had a go of the security guards tazer! Oh the fun.

We managed to leave Chengdu when the morning awakenings by the building site next door got too much hangover cleared, we headed off to Chongqing in the hope of hopping on a boat up the three gorges the next day!


Chongqing

Well, after a week of being woken at nine by a the lovely builders next door, all of ten metres from our head we decided that a quite spot, out of the city centre might be nice. So, we arrived at our hostel to find it was not just beside a building site but it was a building site!

mmmmm, we took a room anyway as we were knackered and waaaay out of the city in a very strange but interesting reconstructed old town on the banks of the soon to be flooded Yangtze. We left first thing the next morning before you could say..."what's that smell". It seems building sites do not make for good plumbing sites (how many years of training and we didn't cop that one!)

So, we went to find a slightly less stinky, more comfortable, more central setting of the "mid range" Chongqing guesthouse, which had received very nice reviews although it was a tad over budget. Well, it seems our guesthouse had been razed so our taxi driver conveniently dropped us off at the Marriott, nice!
That being a touch too expensive we were directed to a less expensive hotel whereupon requesting directions to an even cheaper hotel we were given a hefty discount (still thrice our budget) so three nights later, twenty baths, laundry service, brekkie in bed.... we find a 3Euro, all you can drink, fine wine 'special' in the uber fancy bar... bliss :)


Chongqing is a very odd place, I'm not sure if we researched wrong or there is a mis-print in our book but this supposedly four million person city seems to hold four billion and they all live in forty storey high skyscrapers that descended from the sky crushing everything below, thousands of them towering over higgledy piggledy old buildings perched on the side of the river. The whole area is analysed and documented and extensively modeled in the massive 'Chongqing Planning Exhibition' which was fascinating if completely bizarre. The spotless exhibition shows all the towns and villages of the area as well as those the Yangtze will flood, all beautifully modeled with flashing lights showing where the water will come up to, with all the buildings in perfect detail that will be, in not too long, totally submersed and viewable through glass bottomed boats! The exhibition also had 'planning games', like sim-city but you got marked for your efforts, prototype 'future houses', web-cams of the city, the history of the area, touch screen info and loads more. All this while outside is a bizarre mish-mash of soon to be flooded over development, well, not exactly flooded but ya never know!

More stuff

In the absence of a proper blog post, here's a link to lots of photos we've put up on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24785933@N07/

Since Paddy's day we've had a hangover, spent a week in Chengdu playing pool and watching DVDs for a mini-holiday, moved again to Chongqing to all-you-can-drink wine and lots of grime, then on to Hong Kong to renew our visas and go see Macau, the real Vegas apparently. We'll find out tomorrow!

Fiona will be back with a detailed update when there's a lot less neon, , gambling, Irish Bars, dumplings and shoe shops to amuse us.

Merry Paddy's Day!

...to one and all.

This is the "Grand Khaan" Irish Pub in Ulan Bataar, they have nice noodles and excellent Guinness.

The photos bit - Mongolia

I'm going to try and throw some photos up here if this infernal machine stops crashing every couple of minutes.

We're in Ulan Bataar at the moment, great little city. Spent a couple of days in the Terelj national park, visiting vaguely animalistic rocks, horseriding, wandering around in the snow. Back in Ulan Bataar we have 4 days to kill before the train to China. haircuts, Irish pubs, slow interneting and French food help to while away the hours. We're moving away from Siberia at this stage, getting warmer and sunnier, less ice on the ground and a few less layers of thermals.

Seamus was stopped in the street by a lovely older chinese couple who wanted to hire him for a month to teach English for 2 hours a day...i was tempted, apparently they're crying out for native english speakers to teach here, a whole quarter of the city centre is full of english institutes, schools and "talktalkenglish" centres.

Cleaning the manky train at the border with Dave

Yummy salty tea with guide and driver in Terelj

If the wind changes your faces will freeze like that, or could just be the ice

gandan monastery, ulan bataar

fiona tucking into an approximation of a cocktail with my "irish flag" in front at le bistro francais (great spot, charming owner)

All going well we'll be in Beijing by the weekend, meeting Rong and the family in Xi'an the following week, on to Vietnam by the middle of April to find a beach and some sun.

T-minus...

..lots of degrees; and the "P" button on this keyboard is about as useful as a Russian receptionist so reader, you will have to forgive the typer and the typing.

So the ferry ferried and we ended up in France. Picked up a lovely turbodiesel golf in Cherbourg and off we chugged to Mont-St-Michel. Spent a few days on the island staying in an old tower with views over the delta, tripped around to St Malo, Granville, an Alligator/Turtle/Lizard sanctuary with giant turtles and lots of chubchubs. Next on to Paris for a random valentine's dinner of pizza and free booooze in the...unusual...boutique hotel.

Then the trains started. Off to Koln, then 2 days to Moscow. Great fun, 2 english carriage-mates, Dan and Daisy made for good cards and beers in the restaurant car. We haven't had reception since Koln though so we couldn't meet up afterwards. They're off on the Vodka train now, probably gee-eyed in Ulan Bataar as I type.

Checked in to a fantastic, if sullen, hotel close to the Kremlin and met Donagh for a lash of beers. MOLA Moscow sounds like a bundle of architectural fun. The cold started to kick in right around then, getting down below -10. The next leg was the 5 night train across Russia to Irkutsk, close to lake Baikal, the deepest and most voluminous body of fresh water in the world. We have been meeted, greeted and escorted by our guide, Alexei, who teaches English and tolerates tourists in his spare time. We headed out to Litsvyanka, small town on the lake edge, for a few days. At the moment there is up to 3 feet of ice across the 60km by 360km puddle, so people ski, iceskate, make ice sculptures and joyride on the lake all day long. We took a quadbike tour across the ice, Fiona was less than impressed with the diehard driving skills of her otherwise flawless travel companion. Lots of fun.

Between Lumnilogical institutes, fish markets, tours, walks, snow angels and general rowdiness, the 2 days in Litsvyanka were busy and fun, you could almost forget the cold if you moved around enough, closed your eyes and imagined a Kerry beach on a rare, warm, summer day.

Back in Irkutsk, we await the train to Mongolia where we have another guide, more tours, more cold and kilometres to get through. Technology eludes us for the time being, we will be throwing up a load of daft photos as soon as we come across the right combination of high-speed connection, decent computer, USB cable, card reader and some spare time.
Til next time,
S and F