Never knowingly taking the shorter route

So I’ve spent the last few days in beautiful Ha Long Bay.  Its a beautiful place with amazing islands that just rise up vertically out of the water, just massive cliffs of rock.  We went in a large set of caves, went swimming and kayaking in the sea and round the cliffs, we explored a small island called Monkey Island (it had monkey on it but no pirates), went cycling through paddy fields and spent an evening on Cat Ba island.  It was really good fun.  This morning, as we were coming back, a big storm started coming in st we got all the good weather and just missed the storm, which was really lucky.

Tomorrow I’m going to bum around Hanoi before getting a sleeper bus to Hoi An.

Beep beep!

The traffic here has the rules and regulation of China, combined with the fact that its all on two wheels.  Its like a more mental Italy.  Crossing the road takes a combination of showing no fear and closing eyes.  Mental.

So I’ve seen my third dead communist dictator.  He’s also  orange and wax-like.  I’ve seen a mental ho-ch-min museum and some other anti-american pro-viet-mihn stuff etc.  Also seem water puppets (they’re puppets in water) and drunk the world’s cheapest beer (about 5p per glass).

I’ve also hidden in the owner of the bar’s bedroom with the other bar residents trying to get round the 12pm curfew and been on a scooter with two other people, while the driver talked into his mobile.

I think that that’s pretty much the Hanoi thing, really.

So, tomorrow I go to Ha Long bay for three days to see the bay, go on a boat, swim, kayak and cycle.  Then on Tuesday I get a sleeper bus (yes, bus) to Hoi An.  So plenty going on, plenty of being a tourist and plenty of doing the local thing.  Lets see what happens, then.

So, I’m in Hanoi.  The journey was really, really simple - which was nice.  I could probably have saved a bit of money, but covering Hong Kong to a nice room in Hanoi in 30 hours, involving three trains and two buses two little golf carts and a motorbike isn’t half bad, I’d say, and shopping around would probably have meant I had to spend nights in places.

Basically, the route was metro train to a station in Kowloon, then train to Guanzhou, then sleeper train to Nanning, then waiting around for a bus to Hanoi, bus to the border, golf cart to the immigration out, golf cart to the immigration in, bus to Hanoi, motorbike to the hostel.  Phew.

So I;’m heading out to explore.

Ok, so I’ve spent just over a week in Hong Kong. In this week I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Kowloon park, reading and thinking about whats gone before and planning whats about to happen. I’ve also been to Cheung Chau island - that has no cars and brilliant seafood, Lantau to see a giant buddah, I’ve spent time shopping, getting visas and meeting people.

Probably the most surprising thing I’ve done this week is go on the roof of the building I’m staying in - Chung King Mansions. The building itself is a sprawling mess of former apartments, now turned into low-rent hostels and hotels. There are 4 sections to it, each with 17 floors. The other night, one of the peopl in my hoste, who seems to have been here forever, showed us how to get on the roof. So we did. We sat, at one point, with our feet dangling off the edge of the roof, with Nathan Road (the main road in Kowloon) 17 floors beneath us, looking at the now pretty quiet road and being able to see right from the harbour, right up into the actual main land where the street ends and turns off. It was an amazing view. It was so late that there was no traffic on the road or in the harbour, and everything was eerily still. We then went down to the harbour and looked at the still water. Something you never see in the day, ever.

So, yea, I’ve been having a brilliant time, though I guess the thing that’ll stick with me the longest isn’t in any guidebook. Incidentally, there is a film containing Chung King Mansions (though it was a 15 years ago and isn’t quite as ropey as it was) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109424/ - Chung King Express. I’m going to have to watch it one day and see what its like.

So, what’s next?  Well, I’ve got my Vietnamese visa and I’ve booked trains as far as the border, so I’m leaving about midday tomorrow.  Hopefully I’ll be in Hanoi, Vietnam the following evening.  But that does depend on me being able to work out how to get across the border.  Should be OK, though.

I’ve been thinking about this trip.  The time I’ve spent in Hong Kong, because its been a lot longer than elsewhere, has enabled me to get to grips with the place in a way that I haven’t really managed so far on this trip.  However, I’m aiming to get to Egypt by the first of December, which only gives me about 11 weeks to do a minimum of 7 countries, so I’ve realy got to aim for a week and a half in each, so I’m going to try and limit the number of places I visit in each country and I’m going to accept that I’m only going to get a snippet of each of them.  Its a shame, I would like to spend a bit more time in each place, but I guess its just not possible.  Though, I will get that experience in Tanzania, I guess, so that offsets it a lot.

Anyway, have to sign off now, next update from Vietnam (hopefully).

Emily left yesterday evening and it really feels like my trip is starting properly now, so I thought I’d write about my general thoughts so far and a little about what I hope is going to happen over the next few months.

For the last few weeks I’ve really been traveling quickly. Half way round the world in three weeks, mainly overland, is a bit of a job. This is because I have been traveling with my friend Emily and she only had three weeks off work and could get a cheap flight back from Hong Kong. It has really been fun and, while I would have liked to see more of Russia and Mongolia and China, its been a really good experience. However, due to the speed and the deadlines to meet etc, there’s not really been much of a time to stop and think. Also, as I’ve had Emily with me, its been a bit safer, a bit more like just another holiday, so its finally hitting me that I’m on my own (well, will be when Anne and James leave later today). Thats a bit scary.

I think the highlights of my trip so far have been the Trans-Siberian, because it was a bit of a once in a lifetime thing, and really fun to see the world really whiz by and walking on the great wall. I would definitely go back to Berlin and Beijing, I’d definitely like to visit Mongolia properly, and I have a suspicion that there’s something I missed in Russia. I’m going to try to avoid sleeping in a hard seat for a night again (though I have a feeling it might just happen at some point) and I’m going to try not to rush things so much again either.

So, how do I feel? I feel a little scared about stepping out into the unknown for such a large amount of time by myself, I keep questioning if I have made the right decision in doing all this and I miss all my friends and family back home a hell of a lot. But I’m also excited about what’s going to happen, I’m looking forward to so many of the bits, I know that people back home are supporting me and wishing me well and I know that if things get difficult I have loads of options to sort it all out.

So, I’m going to spend this week in some of the greener bits of Hong Kong, I might go to Macao, I’m going to sort out my visas for South East Asia and I’m going to relax, build up my reserves for the journey ahead.

So, Xi’an. We saw the terracotta warriers. They were indeed terracotta. They were also warriors. They were made for the tomb of the first Chineese Emporer to unify China. He wanted to continue his rule into the afterlife so had an army built and buried in a 50km square tomb. Unfortunatly just after he died the peasents revolted and smashed it all. So most of the stuff to see is either broken or un-excavated ones. So while it was pretty good, it wasn’t as good as people seem to wreckon it was. But I have seen it now, and not just a few in London, but not as many as I thought I would see.

If we’d had more times, there were a few other things to do in Xi’an, for instance it has its original city walls still intact, but we had to jet off to Hong Kong.

So we had to get a plane, and an early one too. But when we got there the e-ticket wouldn’t work and eventually we had to pay for the tickets again. Luckily the people we bought them off have refunded us that money so thats all good. It was manic, but we got the plane.

We flew to Shenzan, then got a bus to Hong Kong,as then its an internal flight and loads cheaper, got ho our hostel and met up with Anne and James.

In Hong Kong we’ve been to the night market and up Victoria Peak and seen a light show. All fun.

So next, Emily is flying back tonight and Anne and James are leaving for Bejing Tuesday, so I’m on my own then. I think I’m going to spend the week in Hong Kong, catching my breath and sorting out visas for the next stage of the trip. Anne and James come back for a day on Friday or Saturday, then I’ll head off to Vietnam next week.

So spent a day in Beijing being touristy, which is, I figure appropriate. Obviously we were a bit stiff from the wall, but we coped.

We started the day early at a park just north of the forbidden city. This was a good move as the park was absolutly full of locals using it in a variety of ways - the other tourists were still in bed. We saw water caligraphy, a variety of dancing, including ballroom and modern macerana style stuff, people doing all mannor of physical jerks and people climbing the hill (which gave a fantastic view ofer the forbidden city), in a way that made it obvious that they’d done this every day for the lat 50 years. It was really good seeing people actually use a common space. All parks get used for in England seems to be to wal dogs and the occasional game of football.

So next we legged it into the north gate of the forbidden city. This is the gate less used, so for the first half an hour or so we were pretty much alone in the part we were in, which was the ceramonial gardens and were brilliant. Then we went into the buildings part of it and it started filling up so we didn’t linger too long - I’d been there before and there was a lot of building going on. In fact there’s a lo of building and restoring going on all over the place. I wonder why that might be (hmm, Olympics…).

So we wandered through Tianman square (more building work) and wandered down to the Temple of Heaven park where we spent a few hours slowly seeing the bits and doing lots of sitting on benches. It was a nice and relaxing, which i what we needed.

After this we went for Peking duck, which was great, then back to the hostel for a beer before getting the 9:35 train to Xi’an - 12 hours on a seat - nightmare!

Actually, though it had been looming over us fo a while, it wasn’t as bad as we feared. We got no where near as much sleep as if we’d managed to get a cabin, but we weren’t too badly off, at least it was pretty new carriage.

Got into Xi’an this morning - a more caotic station I’ve never seen. Fought our way to the hostel and then set about finding our way to the terracotta warriors.

So what were they like (other than warriors made of clay), tune in next time to find out more. Du du duuuur!

Walked the wall today. I guess I’ll let them off calling it great. We walked about 10km along it. At times it was pretty steep, but we persevered and had a good time. Loads of amazing views - I’ll upload photos when I get a faster net connection - and generally nice to be on my feet rather than on my bum on a train.

I did a similar walk last time I was in China (2002, I think), but it was the day of a massive dust storm and it was impossible to see the views, it was like everything was shouded in this magical red cloud, so going again today was brilliant as I could see what I’d missed out on last time. Also, the zip-wire off it at the end was open so I could go down that too, which was fun.

Ok, tomorrow I’m off to the forbidden city and probably a few other thigns, then I’m off to Xi’an on the train to see the terracotta warriers, so probably next updat in a couple of days.

Phew, talk about wistle-stop!

So, six days on a train. What can I say? I learned that no-one was particularly upset to be leaving Russia, that Siberia is empty, but hot in the summer, that Mongolia is just a desert, that China has amazing hills.

No, me and Emily managed to avoid arguing, so anyone who had bet money on that is pretty much wrong.

Got to Beijing and got sorted in a hostel. As Emily is on a tight schedule we only have two full days in Beijing, but because the trains aren’t doing what we expect we’re going to get the train to Xian to see the terracotta warriors, but then have to get a plane to Hong Kong, which is a shame as I wanted to do it all by land, but the trains just haven’t done what we were led to expect. Oh well, I’ll cope.

Anyway, got to go I need an early night as I’m walking the wall tomorrow.