Our Japan blog is now available

Click here Living outta the suitcase in JAPAN or on the Japan link from the side bar. Happy blogging, Bloggers!!

Zai.Jyen China (farewell quote)

We really tried with the language, but we couldn’t understand a word they responded with, and the phrasebook certainly didn’t teach us how to translate addresses. You can imagine the frustration of not being able to do something simple as just getting into the cab and arriving at your destination.

Oh and the people here are pretty rude, when it comes to getting into lifts, or in the metro. They just push there way on and off, (you can even miss your station in the process, cause the metro is sooo packed full of people, its just so near to impossible to get off and on during the very brief moment the tube decided to stop at the station) EXTEND THOSE STOP BREAKS.. YOU DIMWITS!

I guess they were never taught its polite to give way to others before entering.. Or being polite in general really, holding doors, or even giving up a seat for a woman - Quite the contrary - never seen anyone want a seat so much in my life… That scene where an empty tube arrives at the station, the doors open & like a herd they all claim the seats like they are made of gold.. Its hilarious and at the same time, damn right bloody weird! We thought for a moment they were playing WWF smack down musical chairs! And man if there was one negative point about the place it was the spitting. The sound of "Huuuuuaaaaack sttthpaaaa" going on at extraordinary volumes, and it was always there. Apparently bodily functions are no subject for taboo in China, hence it was huuuacked right in front of us constantly.

I do however have something positive to say about China, the Food its absolutely glorious… even the pot noodles out here are just soooo yum, and China's sights & cities have been pleasant enough.
Oh and the street lights - look how pretty they are?!

Jin Mao Tower

The Jin Mao tower is the 4th tallest building in the world, with 88 floors. Grand Hyatt Shanghai occupies floors 53-87. We spent our final evening in China on the Observatory deck where there was a fabulous view of Shanghai. We timed our visit just before dusk, so we could catch both daytime and evening views. By day the view wasn’t the best, the skyline was just covered with the smog from the polluted city below.
However it was stunning by night when the entire city was lit up. We also spent some time writing and sending postcards to friends and relatives as on the 88th floor resides the worlds tallest post office.
The highlight of our visit has to be the authentic pearl we both were given at the top, watched it being prised open out of a clam and everything. This has to be the best souvenir received from all the countries visited so far.

Oriental Pearl Tower

After going through the bund tunnel, we walked up out of the underground and turned left. There it was the landmark of Shanghai - we walked along near the Oriental Pearl Tower which is a huge tripod looking structure with a big globe sticking out. Not all that by day aside from being tall, but by night when it was illuminated with all kinds of colours really made it look impressive.

Bund Sightseeing Tunnel

At last we visited the famous Bund area. We decided to take the Bund sightseeing tunnel built under the Huangpu River which had been packaged with a few other exhibitions. The tunnel its self wasn’t all that.. And certainly not for those who suffer from epilepsy. It was a regular little cable car that went through a regular tunnel only a poor light show was going on (looked like a bunch of Christmas lights bought from B&Q hardware store). They also had a few puppets being blown around by some kind of fan. Needless to say, we weren't fans of the ride but we did it twice, as we couldn’t be bothered to walk further along to find an alternative route across the Huangpu River.

First exhibition was the Deep Water Sea Exploration (so called). On the photo there was an exotic fish, swimming over the coral reef. When we went in there were a bunch of fish tanks with less than tropical fish inside (found more tropical fish in our local Fish & Chip shop). They did however have some cool looking turtles swimming around. They looked just like the ones in Finding Nemo. They had something going on whereby the locals would throw money on some of the sea life models. There was a live turtle in a tank that had loads of cash on his back. I think he must have been the richest turtle on the planet (soon to be floated on the stock market also I think…get it?…floated!)

Next we went to the Sex & Health Exhibition. Well heck it was paid for so may as well make the most of it. Although we were expecting something odd, this took the biscuit. Had nothing whatsoever to do with health. They had all sorts of phallic sculptures on display. Some warped minds must have created them I tell you. On to the next exhibit!

The next was the Fantastic Sound World Exhibition which to be quite honest…sucked big time. We all went in & sat round a large boardroom table (as if entering a séance), put some earphones on, then lights went out (pitch black) and then the show started (without an introductory to any of this). I think they were aiming to give a sense of spooky atmosphere through sound. It was more like a bunch of people clacking chairs, stirring a spoon in a cup of coffee vigorously & going "Mwaaaahahaha" in your ear (all in Chinese). It was the biggest waste of time since I don't know when.

Metro system in Shanghai officially sucks!

After we were stranded 2 nights in a row. According to the L.Planet guide it runs till 11pm, It was 10.30pm when we got stuck at Shanghai Railway Station and apparently we had also missed the last bus which came to our neck of the woods. And today they took the michael when they decided to stop our line before 10pm while the others were still running.
No alternative route advised either, after I took my frustration out on the Metro Staff, We managed to walk away with a refund and misguided information to an alternative bus route home.. From where we took a cab! Damn their screwed up system. Cant believe everything comes to a close around 10ish and by 11pm the roads are totally deserted (out of city anyway).

The Worlds Largest Coke Bottle.

Going round & round in circles..

We just wanted to watch a simple English movie in a simple English movie showing cinema... of which they have a few here in China.

However, after going on a shopping spree at the Pacific Digital Mall, we thought we would end the day nicely with a movie.. as it was just next door to in Metro City Shopping Centre.
We stepped outside and the Pacific Digital Mall was surrounded with Shopping Centre's but which one was Metro City.. ?
Would help if the names of places and buildings were in English rather than Chinese.. for gods sake you people love neon.. imagine how much each building would stand out when the names are shining in neon in both English and Chinese!

The French Concession

On entering Xiangyang Market we were confronted by a god awful stench of 1000 butchers butcher shops. We kept walking anyway as we'd heard about all the knock off gear you could get there. As we walked it got worse and worse. It started tame, with fish being gutted, then it got to slaughtered pigs and their ribs, then the little pig trotters for people to buy. At this point Bobbi started to feel ill. We kept walking in a panic before she was really ill, as we walked there were these huge frogs (and I mean huge). There was also this vat of fish, one of which was flipping up in the air time and time again, bashing it's brains all over as it did so. If you are a little ill from reading this you probably know how Bobbi felt. Anyways we got out of the dead animal section… and on to the bargains!

As you pass each stall here you are never at peace. They see tourists and they hound them to come into their stalls. They will even follow you around the market. No matter where you go…they will find you. They were all selling their knock off bags, watches and DVD's. They are all about 10 times too expensive but after real bargaining they will come down to 10% of the original price.

As you walk around the streets outside there are people selling bags cheaper again, from little fold away stalls. Although we did notice how quickly those little stalls fold away when a police officer walks by
- One minute he was there, the next he was gone!

Winners don't take drugs....

.......even in China I(Paul) get offered drugs..
We were walking around minding our own business along Nanjing Road and some guy pulled me over to ask if I was interested in buying some drugs. This was a major surprise to me as drug trafficking still holds the death penalty here. This guy didn't seem to care who he asked or who heard him do so.

Crazy Taxi.

We've just arrived in Shanghai and we embark on the usual nightmare journey from airport to hotel.
So far everything is ok, we have found a bus that takes us to the Shanghai Railway Station where we can get on a metro train to a stop near our hotel.
....One and a half hours later we get into a cab (believing as usual that the cab driver knows where he is going).
As it happened he didn't, neither could he speak English, nor read our address we had printed, nor understand the address when we told him. After quite a lot of driving we still were non the wiser. We stopped at the nearby university and got out (hopeless cabbie, if he didn't know where he was going, why did he accept our fare?)
Anyways, by chance there was this random student there who could speak a little English. He not only translated for us but also got into the cab and took us to our hotel. What a life saving young chap! Scary though, we would never have got home otherwise.

Huaqing Pool - Hot Springs

- A photie of the Black Horse Mountain from a distance

This place had the most beautiful setting & such a romantic feel to it, Its' situated at the foot of a Mountain called Black Horse.

Water from the hot springs used to feed this bath house, which had numerous pools back in the Palace back in the Tang dynasty days. There are just remains of these pools here now, but you can still experience the hot water flowing in from the springs today...

The museum has an impressive model of the complex complete with the mountain springs feeding the bath houses (that you can see us modelling here). Along with various rooms which tell a story of the royals who used to live there, with some interesting artifacts, for you ancient lovers out there.



So pretty!!!

We couldnt resist doing a 007 here.

The Egyptian Pyramids

Dunno what these were as we spotted them on our way back from visiting the The Army of Terracotta Warriors, manged to get a quick photie of them from the coach.






At a closer look it appears that China has its very own Egyptian Pyramids.

Army of Terracotta Warriors

The vaults of the Terracotta Army were discovered in 1974 by a local farmer and was regarded one of the greatest discoveries in archaeological history. It was also named the eighth wonder of the world (the Army not the farmer).

Greeting us at the main gate there was a giant sculpture. Following that there was a long walk to the main grounds. These grounds looked impressively well maintained and well decorated. It was all so clean and picturesque, surrounded by mountain views. There were three separate vaults/ sites for the army. Number Two, although huge, was a bit pants. It had hardly anything inside, no soldiers, nothing. We walked into vault number one which was surrounded by people having photos taken. As we managed to push past there was a sea of soldier sculptures. They all looked so unique. Vault three was a little smaller but had a bunch of horses there also.

We also checked out the museum which had loads of little trinkets and weapons from such times. There was also a large horse and cart sculpture inside. There were also more warriors that had been separated from the main vaults. All in all we were very much impressed with our tour and would recommend it to anyone visiting China.

I'M MELTING…I'M MELTING!

It is quite funny, the people here really are afraid of melting. Not only do all of their cosmetics contain skin whitening ingredients, but also check out their shades. They don't wear the regular sunglasses like the rest of us…oh no! They have these things that look like welders masks that cover their entire faces, preventing even a slight tan.
Not to mention they all carry umbrellas to block out additional deadly rays (It really isn't that hot out here either).
Strange... but True!!

Mcdonalds Menu:

Spicy chicken burger
Grilled chicken
More fold over looking things
Radioactive purple contents of pies
Cream Soda (Coke with ice cream on top)

Overnight train

This was the one journey I was dreading. 12+ hours of being stuck in a sleeper cabin with two people we didn't know. I expected the most horrid stench ridden cabin with the most vile people on the planet. As I entered I found the cabin to be pretty clean, pretty small and a squeeze for the luggage, but pretty comfortable all the same I thought. Bobbi on the other hand was well annoyed at this point. The idea of being stuck up on the top bunks just didn't sit right. Added to that it didn't seem like they had given us the correct room number.

Anyways, we get settled for our journey and one hour in we are sitting reading and making the most of something unpleasant. Then it came! One of the guys turned on his laptop and began to play 'music'. Why oh why did it have to be country music? Then came the Bodyguard soundtrack, then some really shingaling like cheesy swooning music. Hell on earth I tell you. I did however nearly wet my pants with laughter when they both started to sing along. Didn't last too long luckily, laptop batteries and all that.

Journal - Beijing West Railway Station

As we are waiting in the soft waiting lounge, Paul is really beginning to dread our overnight journey to Xi'an which lies ahead. His impression of the Chinese population is people coughing & spitting everywhere, we are due to share our cabin with two others as we have booked a x4 softbed cabin.
I really dont think its going to be that bad so im not worrying at all, where on the otherhand my hunny is really panicking & oppose to admitting that, he keeps reminding me how much I shall be hating the journey -

Bike in a Box

Still not tired of shopping we decide to head further up town to a spangley looking mall. But how to get there we ask?
Hang on… what's this..? a bike in a box? Always up for an adventure we climbed in. It was a little like being taken away in one of those prison vehicles and really cramped too. Quite novelty though.

Snack in a pack!

The people out here don't half eat some weird stuff. As we checked out our mini bar at the hotel there was this weird dried up shrivelled, raw stinky beef in a packet, together with some other weird Ginger gunk, at least it felt like gunk. Eeeeeeooohhh!

CHINA'S ISSUES

No Lonely Planet guide to China
After searching around pretty much every bookshop in China (both national and international books), the Lonely Planet guide was nowhere to be found. We reached another shop and thought we would ask one last time. To our surprise we find out that China has a problem with the Lonely Planet guide to China hence they banned it. Nice one…cheers to China for stuffing up our holiday. However, lucky for us one of our tour pickup's was from a Youth Hostel and we spotted the L.Planet to China neatly displayed in their bookshelf. We've never been more pleased to see the guide.. Really felt lost without it here!

No Blogging! Or google!
Still raw from finding out that China doesn't like our reading material, we now discover that what is written is a problem also. We had problems viweing our blog here, no matter which hotel we went to. They even had us believing that we had screwed up our coding somewhere. It wasn’t till 1 of our praiseworthy bloggers informed us our blog was viewable, they're simply banned in China. Tough deal guys.!

Forbidden City &Tiananmen Gate

We were truly forbidden on the first attempt as we were too late. Instead we went into the Tiananmen Gate section. Nice décor, lots of royal kinds of things. Not as much on the wow factor as some of the other things we'd seen mind.

The following day as we walked around the main grounds of the Forbidden City we checked out the throne room, living quarters, all sections of the grounds. It was a pleasant enough experience, complete with loads of little museum sections showing loads of trinkets. Worth a visit, lots of history.
Oh and if you do go, you will see some huge flights of stairs. Bobbi decided she wasn’t doing anymore stairs as we had been to the Great Wall the day before, and gentlemanly as I am, ended up carrying her up those stairs as the crowds looked on. Very romantic if I dare say so myself.

The Great Wall

After a 4 & half hour coach journey we arrived at the Great Wall, our tour guide informed us that he would be waiting for us at the other end (we saw him nicking off through the hills for a short cut). We decided to take the scenic route in the form of a cable car (saves 30mins apparently). Well we didn't want to be the last to finish did we? As we looked out on the coming journey, it looked no less than EPIC! (in slow motion). When we got to the top, ready to start our walk, some of the others had already passed us by (save 30mins my eye!)
After passing the 1st tower and on approach of the 2nd we realised this was going to be harder than we thought. The pathways went from derelict to sometimes non existent, with almost a 70 degree incline to some of the towers. Where the towers were a mere ruin we were forced to take the dangerous cliff edge side walk. There was so much rubble & grit lying around on the ground that Bobbi slipped and fell three times, the most amusing one was right after I had just warned her to be careful not to slip (Bobbi: I wasn’t warned against wearing high heels...hee!).
It was pretty scary at times. We later read that the Simatai section of the wall was not for the faint hearted.
During most of our trek we were thinking to ourselves… I'm hungry… Oh and "Look at the positive side, we get through this (alive) we never have to do this again". The locals on the other hand did this every day, scattering themselves at each of the towers situated along the wall, selling drinks, books and T-shirts.

Each step we took across the wall, the scenery was breathtaking. We paused on many occasions for photie opportunities. We even spotted a snake, i only caught the tail end in the photie tho - it’s a shame we can't post them all.
The latter half of the wall just before we reached the suspension brigde was the restored section - which is what we were expecting the rest of it to be like, But the rawness of the wall sure does give you an edge to the trek. Literally!

It didn’t help that we had last seen food at 6am that morning, and were trekking off just fluids (bless the locals selling it at rip off prices). Our legs had turned to jelly and we had just reached the road that we so solemnly believed was the end and at it awaited a restaurant or food stall- we could've eaten anything that moved at this point.
We don’t see any of the team or guide and the locals selling more fluids direct us further along, where we spot our tour guide.
At last, the end! ……..Yeah right. We discover that there is another 30 minutes walk which lies ahead OR… we could take the zip line route.
On a normal day such death risking activities would be on the 'certainly not' list. After such a long walk however, both Bobbi and I were pretty much fighting to get into our harnesses so we could get to the end fast. As we went down on this thing we both screamed like little girls.
There was a boat waiting for us at the end - (It felt just like the Milk Tray ad), After the boat pulled up the opposite side of the what looked like civilisation. We managed to hobble along and drag ourselves in to the Café heavily sponsored by the Lonely Planet guide (as they had a huge banner hanging outside that you couldn’t even miss from the moon!) And stuffed ourselves for China!!!

Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

They are rather excited by the Olympic Games coming to Beijing in 2008 - they have a huge countdown to the date, up outside the Museum. Practically a monument in itself.

Calligraphy Exhibition

As we walked around on Tiananmen we were approached by the usual 'friendly' person. "Hi where you from, how can I help", the usual. Only this time it was from a couple of students who were studying at the arts museum (yin building opposite yang). For once we were happy to hear from one of these oppose to the usually pushy people, and went along to see there exhibition as it was the last day. As we looked around there was a load of impressive art work of very high standard. There were inks, oils, watercolours and calligraphy. One of the artists kindly offered to write our names and a message in Chinese style calligraphy for us.
Upon regular visits through Tiananmen Square we were approached once again, another student who was on his way to the museum and also offered us a visit to his University's exhibition as it was the last day, when its seemed to him that we were kinda adamant to go our way he offered to do us a calligraphy of our names too.
It soon came apparent this appeared to a regular stunt they pulled in order to get the public in to the museum in order to sell there art work.

Tiananmen Square

Thanks to the Holiday Inn we had a little 'Take me here card' with the Chinese translations of some of the sights. Tiananmen was one of the first I wanted to see because of the tragedy in the 90s. We arrived at this huge space (the largest of it's kind in the world so I'm told). It had a huge memorial to the people of China on the square its self and was framed almost, by two large buildings. They were both similar styles only male and female versions (yin and yang). There were plenty of troops walking around on parade which was also pretty novelty.

Language barrier.

Its near to impossible getting around without a phrase book out here, so bring your Mandarin skills with you if your considering a visit.
We didn’t get a chance to pick up a Lonely Planet guide for China prior to us arriving, and man we wish we had just brought the one we saw at Kuala Lumpur airport - however at the time we thought it would be cheaper to pick up in China itself, and

my… hand... slowly… reached... out... &... placed… the... book... back… on... the... shelf. - (can see it all happening again in flashback)!

Moving on, we got into China, and finding a bookstore without the lonely planet guide is difficult enough, luckily we drove past a huge building named Beijing Bookstore, and we thought - yes there is a god! At arriving at this glorious bookstore, which was absolutely huge… There wasn’t a single English book in the entire humongous beast of a building… is what we thought - at leaving the store glancing to the left we spotted a Lonely Planet guide whispering out to us. At approaching the section to our luck, they had em all except of course China! So we took our sorry asses out of the store and went on in the hunt of another bookshop.
There was a foreign language bookstore which we found in Beijing - we managed to pick up a Mandarin Phrasebook from here. But they didn’t have any Lonely Planet guides on China, but we felt we made some progress as we could now say:

"Yo.may.yo lor.ne.lee poo.la.nai.ter der lew.yo jir.nun shoo"

in Mandarin, which translates to: ''Do you have any Lonely Planet guidebooks?''

Journal - Arriving in China..

At leaving the airport, I found we were being huddled into a cab by the airport traffic control at asking them a simple question.
Not responding to my question of how much the cab was going to cost us as our luggage was being loaded into the trunk of the car. I had to shout "Stop" to catch his attention to let him know I wasn’t to be ignored. Immediately I found a man appeared from no where stating it would cost us 150RMB some huge drop to the initial 350-400RMB that we were quoted inside the airport!!!

We arrived at our hotel, was provided with our key card and no directions to where the lift was or verbally informed us of our room number.
At questioning she responded with 4th floor.
Absolutely exhausted at this point, hungry and sleepy - was looking fwd to just dropping our luggage into the room and heading for some food, to find when we arrived at our room, it was a twin - went down and she appeared to understand and gave us another key card. We checked out this room, and the next and the next to discover they were all twin rooms. And to our horror they didn’t have any double bed rooms in the hotel. Bizarre!! Apparently it’s the standard for China!
Quite clearly we cancelled our booking and checked in to the Holiday Inn, where as always our every need was catered for.
Of course this whole cancelling to stay with them process wasn’t the simplest, with no one at the hotel being able to speak English. The receptionist had a translator on speed dial who she kept calling and handing me the phone, not informing me of who I was about to speak to.

…..and little did we know that this was just the beginning. Welcome to China!!

Nee Hao from China People!!