We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz

We are sitting in the WildFire Bar & Restaurant in Hong Kong Airport waiting for our flight to Perth,Australia. We have treated ourselves to a glass of very fine NZ white wine. For me, this has been my third glass of wine for nearly 7 weeks - can you feel my pain?

My love for weak Chinese beer was very short lived when the nights ended and I was still coherent and oddly, really hydrated in the mornings.
P.S. I'm the one second from the right!

Slideshow - Hong Kong

Slideshow - Huashan

Slideshow - Liuzhou & Cheng Yang

Slideshow - Yangshuo

Slideshow - Pingan & Dazai

Smallest room yet...

The final night in China was spent on a lovely train, this time in little 6 berth cabins, 3 bunks high. As you can see, we had the top bunks and although there was plenty of space to stretch out, the slight lack of headroom was a little uncomfortable. Everything was fine, until the train started to move, which then resulted in the ceiling above us rattling pretty much until 10am the next morning and the air-con re-cycling air that seemed to originate from wherever the Chinese were breaking the No Smoking rule - which they do a lot. Still, it took us over 1000kms to the Hong Kong border, so that was good enough for me. All I had to hope for then was that they would let me out more easily than they let me in ;-)

YangShuo delicacies...

After the peace and quiet of the countryside, Yangshuo was a bit of a relief. It did indeed have brick built hotels, shops, some beautiful scenery and some interesting food. Although this particular restaurant menu seemed to offer some new taste experiences, we opted for some veggie steamed dumplings. One of the food highlights the next day was a chilled thick cup of sweet corn juice…much tastier than you might think!

Front row seats for the Dong Minority show…

When we were in Chengyang, we were taken kicking and screaming (well, some of us…ok, it was just me) to a minority group cultural show in the village square. This basically involved a small group of men and ladies, in traditional Dong dress, singing, dancing and then serving us a small cup of local rice wine - see pic. Thankfully it was quite short, finishing up with the most ancient tradition… dragging up the tourists to have a little dance with them - Mike was first up, I of course took the role of official group photographer! Finally, at the end of the show, there was a deluge of sweet old ladies selling hanging things for good luck… try as you might, you couldn’t shake them off, so a couple of souvenirs were purchased - which might be turning up in a Christmas stocking near you…

Rice terrace trekking

After the peace and quiet of our first 2 nights in China, we headed for the city for a quick night stop before spending another day on the buses to get to ChengYang and then the LongJi rice terraces. The least said about the city the better ;-) It was hot, we were literally the only westerners wandering the streets and there was meat in almost everything on the breakfast buffet, including the French toast. (The Chinese don’t always understand vegetarianism, if you ask for Vegetarian, they first of all try to give you just a little bit of meat, then eventually understand that you’d prefer none!)

But the villages were a breath of fresh air. We stayed in a succession of traditional guesthouses, all built from wood, with nothing but a wall of tongue & groove between us and the people in the next room… and it wasn’t just the next room you could hear, you could hear a mouse burp in the room beyond that as well. You can only imagine the problems Mike had when trying to stifle those natural bodily noises.

We wandered through the villages, took countless photos of rice drying in the sun and tried to get the ultimate shot of an old Chinese lady for the portrait wall at home. One day was spent walking between villages, about 6 hours in all, up hill, down dale and stopping off at the house of a local minority family for lunch en-route. This pic shows the cooks in action.

After all that fresh air and peace and quiet, as much fun as it was, we were pretty glad to get to the next town, where we had been told the hotels were made from bricks and there was a McDonalds on the corner.

Welcome to China...

So, after a long travel day starting at about 8am and involving a bus, a speedboat and another mini bus, we arrived at the Chinese border at about 4pm. Exiting Vietnam was simple. Filling out Chinese Immigration forms was ok. We passed the quarantine checks for Swine flu and thought it was plain sailing from there. How wrong could we be.


I got to the immigration desk first, stood where I was supposed to and looked sweet and innocent, as always. After a few minutes, the official started to hold up my passport to the light and look at each page very, very carefully. She checked the visa and stamps from previous trips. Odd I thought, but she’s just being thorough.


Then she called over a colleague and handed him my passport, along with a whisper of Chinese and a sideways glance in my direction. Hmmm… My passport proceeded to be checked against the light by a few other officers before one of them came over and asked me to step aside…the conversation when something like this:
Officer: “Where is the exit stamp from China?” (meaning when we left Tibet 2 years ago)
Me: “I don’t know.. It must be in there somewhere”
Officer: “Where is it?”
Me: “Sorry, I don’t know”
Officer, handing me my passport: “Show me where is the stamp”
Me, frantically looking: “I don’t know.”
Officer: “When did you leave China?”
Me: “Right before I entered back into Nepal”
Officer: “That’s not possible. It would have been stamped. Do you not remember getting it stamped?”
Me: “I don’t know, it was two years ago” …


Anyway, Mike and the leader were part of it by this stage too…since whatever was not in my passport was probably not in his either. So, we were directed to sit down whilst more discussions went on, both passports disappeared and we ’relaxed’ watching a Michael Jackson concert. More questions followed, during which we tried to show that since we had an entry stamp into Nepal 10 days after entering Tibet, then we must have left China. We also reminded them that we were travelling on a group visa and so maybe it was that paperwork that was stamped and not our passports.



Seems though that they suspected that we were travelling on fake passports… so none of that necessarily washed. At this point, although I’m not known for having irrational thoughts, I started wondering how many people I would be sharing my room at the Border Control Hotel with (aka, prison) and if it would have an en-suite.
But after an hour or so start to finish, the nice officer returns our passports and says that there could have been a mistake at the Nepalese border and that we could go through. Phew is an understatement. (The picture by the way is Mike pretending to be in a cell at the Hanoi Hilton…now a museum, but a prison during the Vietnam war.)

Moving onto mopeds...

Next stop after Ha Long was Cat Ba island. The town itself didn’t have a huge amount to offer (other than cafes, flip-flop shops and the usual market) so we opted for a moped tour, taking in some caves that were used as a hospital in the Vietnam war, a mountain climb in the national park and then lunch at a fishing village. The moped and driver were supplied, so we only had to hang on and enjoy the ride - or go hands free and take photos of each other when overtaking…the latter was more fun! The climb proved quite challenging too…UK Health and Safety officials would have shut it down immediately! Some pictures will be in a Cat Ba Album.

Vietnamese diving lessons…

After leaving Hanoi, we had a cruise around Ha Long Bay, off the coast of Vietnam, famous for having thousands of karst limestone ‘mini mountains’ that rise right out of the sea. We had our own ‘junk’ boat for the 6 of us and a crew of about 4...not bad going we thought. After mooring up for the night, I took a kayak for a spin whilst Mike opted for a leisurely swim and a bit of diving. Had I pressing the shutter in time, this picture would have shown him in mid air, performing a double twist backwards somersault before entering the water for a perfect 10...or it would have shown him jumping off, arms and legs waving uncontrollably and entering with a huge splash, resulting in a mini tidal wave almost capsizing my kayak - you decide.

Cycling in Hanoi...

One of the first lessons you learn in Hanoi is that everybody and everything with either legs, wheels or a combination of both, has the right to use the road or pavement and in whatever direction they feel like. To cross the road, you definitely don’t stop... just look, listen and walk with confidence. You do become strangely confident in a scarily short period of time.
Anyway, as well as risking life and limb on foot, we also took a cyclo tour, which was great for the first hour…after 3 hours however we were feeling a bit lazy and had latched onto the fact that the cyclo drivers were in fact taking us around in circles to fill up the time. A lesson learnt.

The Great Firewall of China...

So, we've discovered that not only does China have the Great Wall, but also the Great Firewall, a not so handy piece of software that enables the government to block websites such as Blogger and Facebook from view- China has repeatedly tried to block electronic access to material it deems illegal under its Great Firewall policy. It bans certain news about Tibet, democracy, anti-government or anti-Communist party activities and sexual content so, we're sorry we've been quiet over the last 10 days, but rest assured, we've been storing up some corkers to post up as soon as we hit the civilisation of Hong Kong.