deep in some blissful dream...

It's been too long!

2008-01-16T01:47:00.000+08:00

Oh my goodness... I just went to see a friend's blog (she's just set up a new one as she's about to set off travelling for a while) and remembered through some misty memory that I have a blog. I can't believe it was March 2007 when I last posted something.

So many things have changed since then!!

Martin and I are getting married on 31 May 2008.... we've moved back to the UK after almost a year travelling around Asia. We're both working and living in Bristol. It feels like an age ago that we were travelling.

Ok, so I have decided to get my ass into gear with this blog thing again.

Watch this space....

don't make me stand any longer...

2007-03-10T12:43:00.000+08:00

About a week ago Martin and I decided to make a "quick trip" to Huangshan - one of the most famous and beautiful mountains in China. At the time we were in Yangshuo, and estimated that it would take maybe just over 24 hours to get there. We thought we'd take a bus to Guilin (the nearest big city an hour away) and then catch a bus or train directly to Huangshan. Ha ha ha. That would have been nice.

What we've actually done over the last week is quite different...

We left Yangshuo around 9am on Sunday morning and arrived in Guilin just over an hour later. We went directly to the bus station to ask for a ticket... which of course they didn't have. We were told that the nearest place we could get to was Changsha, so we bought a ticket and waited for a few hours in the stinky bus station. The ticket to Changsha was ridiculously overpriced and it was only after a good long think that we realized we were in fact traveling on Lantern Festival. Good one.

We arrived in Changsha at about 11pm, only to find the ticket office was already closed and we'd have to find a bed for the night. We opted for the cheapest option - following a little woman to her "house-hotel"... we were shown to a tiny dirty "room" that held one rock hard bed and a small rubbish bin. The walls of this room were pieces of cardboard held together by sticky tape and there was no roof. She left us there trying to figure out how we'd both fit in this bed and how we'd keep our skin from touching anything in the room!!

Needless to say the amount of sleep we both got was minimal. We dragged our bruised (the bed was really hard!) and tired bodies out at 7am in order to get a head start at the ticket office. What a nightmare!! After waiting a good 20 minutes in the queue, the woman behind the counter shouted "mayo" (which means 'no have') to every destination we asked her.... and believe me we tried a lot of places!! The queues for the tickets were nuts (as they usually are in China) with people pushing, shoving and screaming at each other while others just jumped the queue and threw money at the ticket-providing lady in desperation!

After a while of standing there trying to figure out what we could do, a lovely young man arrived and offered his services in broken English. We explained that we were trying to get to Huangshan and after much discussion he suggested we just buy a ticket to Yichun. We looked on our map... no Yichun. I asked whether he was sure it was in this province and he said "yes yes it's a big city". Huh. Where was this big city on our map??
In the end we decided to trust him and were grateful as he helped us buy the ticket... another expensive one. We just hoped we'd at least be driving over a huge distance to make up for the price.

Our bus from Changsha to Yichun left at 9:30am, and we left quite happily thinking that we were on the last leg of the journey. But then we started driving further and further away from civilization and the only towns we passed seemed ghost-like. There were just a few people in the streets and most of the houses were abandoned. Scary.
Suddenly (only 4 hours later) we found ourselves driving into a big city and stopping outside the bus station. We were in Yichun already! Our friend was right - it was a big city, but the trouble was we'd only driven for 4 hours!

At the Yichun bus station we again encountered the "mayo mayo" and we started to feel rather pissed off. What were we doing wrong?? We decided to go to the train station and attempt to buy a ticket there...

At the station the queues for just getting into the ticket-buying-area were so long we almost turned around, but then Martin had a good idea... we played super dumb and got some of the guards at the door to help the "poor foreigners who speak no Chinese". A man led us to the ticket office and straight to the front of the queue!! Nice. We were told (again) that there were no tickets to Huangshan, and just as we were about to give up and just ask for a ticket back to Guilin, the security guard asked us to follow him. He took us past the crowds of people and into the waiting hall. There he explained in Chinese (which I had to pretend I only half understood) that we'd have to wait for 5 hours here but then he could help us onto the train. Good news!

Waiting for 5 hours for a train you have no ticket for is not the best situation to be in, plus it was freezing in the waiting room... we sat there feeling very sorry for ourselves but still grateful that the guard had even helped us in the first place. Usually people in China don't want to deal with foreigners so we're left to fend for ourselves.

5 hours later we were escorted onto platform 1 by about five guards, one platform manager and one English speaking woman who they'd recruited as our translator. When the train arrived we were taken to the seating carriages and told to just get on. "But we don't have a ticket" I said... "It's ok you can just stand" was the reply. What?? This was a 12 hour overnight train!!! Martin told me I should just be grateful we got on the train in the first place but I was really not looking forward to standing for 12 hours.

It was just after 7pm when we got on the train... we found a small place by the door to put our bags down and that was that. Being by the door had two disadvantages - it was colder and filled with smoky boys, but it was at least less full of people than the actual carriage so there was a little space to move. We stood and stood and stood some more.

By 2am we'd moved into the carriage as the cold was really getting to me and the smoke was affecting Martin's lungs. There was pretty much no room to move in there and we were squashed up against other peoples bodies, faces, bums... whatever.

The only piece of good luck on that trip happened at 3:30am when we were told we could upgrade our "tickets" to a sleeper if we wanted to. After explaining that we didn't actually have tickets, the kind conductor helped us out anyway and gave us two sleeper tickets!! Yeah baby, I've never been so happy to be able to lie down :)
We only had a few more hours left on the journey but it was bliss to get under a duvet and shut our eyes.

We arrived in Huangshan city just before 7am and were flooded by touts offering their various services (food, hotel, bus) as soon as we walked out of the station. We took a bus to Tangkou (a small town nestled right under the mountain itself) and managed to find a cheap-ish hotel just next to the bus station.

Time for some sleeeeeep.....

Cambodia and Vietnam in a whiz...

2007-02-28T14:50:00.000+08:00

We left Bangkok on Friday 9 Feb ready for a change. I was so excited because after a good 3 weeks (it might have been longer! eek) in the city I was ready to get out and see some stuff. I do love Bangkok though - it's clean, the people are friendly and it's a lot of fun. It's probably one of the most convenient places we've been to on our trip... and easily where we've spent the most money!!! But that said, I was sooo glad to get out of there!!

And into Cambodia...

Cambodia is a gorgeous country. Such a tragic history... and yet every Cambodian I met had the biggest smile on their face. Such nice people.

So our first stop had to be Siem Reap. We were extremely lazy and did what we would never usually do... we stayed in the hotel that our bus brought us to when we arrived. Such a mistake when you're traveling on a shoestring but it was late at night and I was not in the mood to walk anywhere with my backpack on. I did, however, manage to bargain them down to $4 for a night - and our lovely room had a tv and a BATH (I overindulged in this particular luxury!). In the end our hotel of choice actually worked out really well for us, we were in a quieter area so there was no noise at night (a treat not to sleep with earplugs!) and we were really close to a local market where we bought fresh baguettes, tomatoes, mangoes, naartjies etc everyday.

On our second day in Siem Reap we found ourselves doing what every tourist to Cambodia does... driving to the oh-so-famous wonder of the world - Angkor, the old cities of the Khmer empire. We arrived at 5:30am ready for the sunrise and proceeded to spent the rest of the day wandering around with our jaws open, the Angkor temples are truly magnificent pieces of man-made architecture. The entire empire was built over a period of 300 years, between 900 and 1200AD.

Map of Angkor area

Our first stop was Angkor Wat at sunrise. Angkor Wat is the principal temple of the empire, built between 1113 and 1150 by the King at the time. It was built mirroring the Hindu cosmology, with the towers in the center representing the home of the gods (Mount Meru), the outer walls representing the mountains surrounding the world and the moat representing the oceans beyond the mountains.

Angkor Wat - said to be the world's largest single religious monument

Close up

As we spent from 5:30am till almost 7pm there we got quite an eye-full of temples and architecture while we were there. It was seriously amazing, but I think I was most grateful to our tuk-tuk driver who spent the day ferrying us around!! It was baking hot and the number of stairs we had to climb was incredible. I felt like every temple /ruin we saw that day had at least 100 steps to climb. I'm probably exaggerating but when its 40 degrees in the shade, those steps are hell!

I love tuk-tuks!

One image that I saw over and over again in Angkor was that of apsaras... a female spirit of the clouds and waters in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. I thought they were really beautiful and thoroughly enjoyed myself trying to find them in the nooks and crannies of every temple we went to.

Another cool photogenic moment was when we climbed the Bayon, built in the exact center of Angkor Thom during the 13th century. This was the only temple built as a Mahayana Buddhist temple, but other local gods and goddesses were also worshiped here. All over the Bayon were these faces smiling down on us...

So once we had Angkor under our belt, we headed down to Phnom Penh in what we were told would be a "big luxury air conditioned bus". What we actually traveled in was a small 25-seater with no air conditioning and only partially functioning windows. All the luggage was put inside the bus, which added to the 'comfort' as everyone had to squeeze around it. The road was terrible, mostly worn-out tarmac and in parts just dirt road. Coming from South Africa I'm not averse to a bit of dirt road and a pot hole or two, but for almost 9 hours... help!

When we arrived in Phnom Penh we took a tuk-tuk to the lakeside area and found a cheap guest house for only $2 a night! To celebrate our budget-friendly accommodation price we splashed out on dinner - $2.5 each for an all-you-can-eat buffet!! It was delicious: lots of coleslaw, chicken, baguettes, soup etc and although we suspected it wasn't quite as authentic as 'traditional Khmer food' would be, it was yummy so we went to bed with full bellies and smiles on our faces!!

The next day we went on another sightseeing spree... this time to the Choeung Ek Killing Fields and the S 21 Museum in Phnom Penh itself. The Killing Fields is an area that used to be an orchard about 17km south of Phnom Penh, where the Khmer Rouge (an extremist Communist party that was ruling Cambodia at the time) executed about 17,000 people between 1975 and 1979. At Choeung Ek you can see many mass graves from which the bodies were exhumed and there are even human bones still lying around the various pits. Almost 9000 bodies were discovered after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, many of whom were former inmates in the S21 prison (Tuol Sleng).

Skulls at Killing Fields

After Choeung Ek, we drove back into the city and visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S 21). This used to be a high school, but was turned over by the Khmer Rouge and used as security prison during their reign of Cambodia. Inside the museum you can see rooms and rooms of photos of the victims... very eerie.

The next day we sadly left behind Cambodia and headed to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam.

It was another long bus ride, but not so painful this time. We arrived in Saigon just after lunch time to rather distressing news. Congratulations to us, we'd arrived smack bang before Tet - Vietnamese New Year. We knew all about Chinese New Year of course, but didn't realise that Vietnam celebrates at the same time!! This meant the prices for accommodation, transport etc would double and there'd be loads more people visiting all the nice places. Bugger! But we took it in our stride and made a new plan... we'd try and get a bus straight out of Saigon that same night and head to Hoi An, where we hoped there would be less tourists than Nha Trang (the beach area we had wanted to visit). It took us a while to find a company that had any seats left but we managed it and had a ticket direct to Hoi An for that evening. Yay. We spent the rest of the afternoon pounding the streets in Saigon and enjoying the local food delights.

That evening we hopped on our Hoi An-bound bus and prepared ourselves for the 20 hour ride. The scene that met our eyes when we boarded the bus was crazy... the pavement and most of the street was FULL (seriously no space left) of people waiting to get on night buses to various parts of the country. When a bus pulled up the Vietnamese all rushed towards it and tried to squash on first... very similar to the Chinese who always seem to desperately need to be first getting on or off any form of transport and will do anything to be first (as if the train/bus would leave without them)!

We had a really good ride to Hoi An actually. We stopped for lunch the next day and Martin and I made friends with a lovely guy from Saigon called Thao. He helped us order some food (we were being overcharged by the waitress for everything until he stepped in) and wouldn't let us pay when we were done. A super nice dude.

Hoi An was a really lovely little town. It used to be an important international seaport town until the late 19th century and has managed to keep a lot of its old architecture. Walking around the old town part is fun, and you can still see a lot of old houses and bridges.

Another thing I loved about Hoi An, and even Vietnam in general, is that you can still see many women walking around in traditional dress. They always look so beautiful.

Vietnamese girls with traditional clothes and conical hats

The conical hats you can see (and buy) everywhere in Vietnam

We stayed in Hoi An for about 5 days, enjoying our lovely hotel (huge bathroom with bath, satellite tv, free internet, mini bar...) and spending a few days just doing nothing. But we didn't just sit around in the hotel room (honest!)... we also hired bikes and cycled down to the beach (more than 5km away) and spent the whole day swimming and lolling about on the soft white sand. Gorgeous.

Once we'd had our fill of Hoi An we took a 4 hour bus trip up the coast to Hue - the old capital of Vietnam from 1744 to 1945 when the last emperor abdicated. It's in an area of Vietnam that was severely damaged during the American war (or Vietnam war as we know it), but many architectural gems still remain in the city.

The citadel

We only spent a day and a half in Hue, but filled that time with walking around the city visiting the sights (all free as we didn't go into the expensive ones!) and eating lots of pineapple. "The pineapple lady" as we've come to call her was probably my favourite part of our time in Hue... she was a small local woman who sat by the river selling fruit and sweets. The first time we went there she couldn't believe we wanted a whole pineapple and kept offering us a stick each (each stick had 1/4 pineapple on it)... we kept refusing saying we wanted a whole new one cut up and could we have it in a bag. She spoke no English and we spoke no Vietnamese but it was a hilarious encounter. We went back to her 4 more times before we left so we built up quite a relationship with her. Everytime we saw her she had a grin from ear to ear and would laugh and make gestures showing her "chopping up a whole pineapple", while saying "chiah chiah" - our communal Engnamese sound-word for chop! She was great.

We left Hue on an overnight bus to Hanoi on Feb 21st, hoping that the capitol city would be cheap, fun and full of free things to do! The bus arrived at 5am and unceremoniously dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, leaving groups of foreigners stranded with no idea where to go. We made some friends and shared a taxi to the Old Quater, an area just north of a pretty Hoan Kiem lake with lots of hotels, restaurants etc. Searching for a cheap hotel at that hour of the morning is never fun, but when you come up with nothing cheaper than $6/night for a room with no bathroom, its pretty depressing. We don't mind sharing a communal bathroom, but we expect to pay a lot less than $6!! However, this we couldn't find so we had to settle for that as it was the cheapest option around (believe me, both us of did a lot of walking to try to find a cheaper place... even dorm beds were going for $5/bed!! Crazy).

That first day in Hanoi we were so tired we didn't manage to do much... we had a nap in the morning, then walked around unsuccessfully trying to find noodle soup for 10,000dong. That's what we'd paid everywhere in Vietnam so far, so we were being stubborn and refusing to pay double that just because it's new year. We did manage to find a place, but I must say the fishy-tasting noodles weren't exactly mouthwatering. They did the trick though! We also walked around a local market, bought more pineapples (I can't stop eating them!) and enjoyed people-watching by the lake.

The next day we made a more concerted effort at sightseeing... we must have walked about 15km around the city! First we went to see the old Imperial city, and managed to get in for free. Not sure how we did that, in fact, I'm not sure how we found the area in the first place - we got kind of lost and ended up walking for a lot longer than planned. Either way, we had a nice chat to a Vietnamese tour official there (who barely spoke English but tried so hard) and he gave us a free copy of a book on the citadel.

Next we went to see Ho Chi Minh and his mausoleum (Martin was looking forward to seeing him in the flesh!)...

Sadly, we'd picked a stupid day to go sightseeing as we discovered the mausoleum (and other sights) were closed because it was Friday. Bummer.

We then saw the one-pillar pagoda (which is nothing to write home about) and then it started to rain. Goodie. I started to worry about Martin catching a cold and us not being properly prepared for this (we gave away all our winter clothes when we left India). We started to walk back to the Old Quater when we saw something that made me forget all about how cold I was... a tiny little kitten was just sitting on the pavement crying and shivering. It had no mummy (that we could see) and was just stranded there, poor little dude. We played with it for a while and then left it near a wall before it got too comfortable sitting on Martin's lap.

We got back to our hotel in time to organise some food for the next day's bus trip to China. We'd managed to find a not-so-good-but-do-able deal on a bus straight to Nanning the next morning. We stocked up on sausages, cheese triangles and baguettes... what yummy sandwiches.

You can find baguettes all over Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam - a trend left by the French colonialists

So our trip through South East Asia finished on Sat 24th Feb when we arrived in China again. It's great to be back in a land where I can speak the language (well some of it anyway) and I know some of the culture... almost feels like home in a wierd way.
We're in Yangshuo at the moment and loving it!! We've got a divinely cheap hotel (Y40 for a triple room with bathroom inside) and the surrounding limestone hills and Li river may just keep us here longer than we think :o)

Thailand and Laos pictures

2007-02-02T12:27:00.000+08:00

We've just finished a whirlwind 8 day tour of Laos, would have liked to have seen more but we're heading back to Bangkok tonight! Going to meet up with friends Ross and Rea from Taiwan - so excited :)

Last time we were in Bangkok we stayed 2 weeks, waiting for visas and enjoying the warm weather. We did some of the sightseeing things too... spent a day visiting the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha (which is actually jade!). We also did a one-day tour taking in the floating market, bridge over the river Kwai and a big pagoda/stupa thing. We loved Bangkok, everyday I ate piles of fresh fruit and veggies... such a wonderful change from all the heavy breads/rice in India. We spent some time shopping for things to have when we get home and even got tailor-made suits for when we head back to the working world!

In Laos we did the three very touristed places (it can't be helped when you're on a tight schedule!!) and packed in as much as we could. I feel like we've been on a bus for the last 8 days!! We headed to Vang Vieng first, and did some tubing down the river, which was tons of fun outside of the fact that the sun barely came out and we froze!! Then we went to Luang Prabang, saw a few wats (temples) and the Mekong river... all nice but we found it very expensive so stayed only one night (we sneakily shared one single bed in a dorm and snuck out early the next morning before we were found out!!! tee hee). Next was Phonsavanh, where I ate a worm ("snack food" we were told) and we took a day tour to see the Plain of Jars... beautiful. The Plain of Jars is a group of historical sights containing thousands of stone jars (a kind of sandstone I think) dotted about the countryside. Nobody really knows how old the jars are but they are believed to be about 2000 years old. It is thought that they were built by an ancient Mon-Khmer race and there are various theories as to what they were used for - one is that they were used to hold rice/wine for celebrations and another is that they are funeral urns. All very interesting.

Now we're in Vientiane (capital of Laos), which is a nice little city but again, too expensive for us. We're struggling to stick to our daily budget these days, which is a little stressful, but hopefully we'll have enough to last till we get home :o)

Here are the photos - they should be bigger this time so easier to see!

Big beard boy at the Chatuchak weekend market in Bangkok

Me showing off the painted walls inside the Grand Palace

Us in front of some God-guard things at the Palace (note the recently trimmed beard and hair - much better!!)

A lady selling her wares on the floating market

Bridge over the River Kwai

On the bridge (jealous Dad??)

Food from Bangkok (cheap and yummy!)

Tubing down the river in Vang Vieng, Laos

The tubing was fun, the views were gorgeous, but the river was COLD! 4 hours of this and my feet felt as cold as they did at Everest Base Camp!!

Most beautiful picture taken of this gorgeous kid in Laos

Me don't like to eat the worm, but me eat it! Gross! (actually it tasted a bit like a Chinese tea egg, wierd)

Chilling next to the jars (outside Phonsavanh, Laos)

Oi, don't fall down the jar... come back fool!

Nepal and India in pictures...

2007-01-22T21:32:00.000+08:00

Photo time!!! Here are some pictures taken in Nepal and India... Pokhara, Lumbini, over the border to Dehli, Kausani, Agra, Khajuraho, Varanasi and finally Calcutta.

In Pokhara we hired a bike for a day... it was a 125cc but went no faster than a turtle!! Martin was cross.

Sunset in Pokhara.. we climbed up the mountain to see the world peace pagoda - sweaty work!!

Chris, Emiko, Martin and I frolick in the grass at Buddha's birthplace. Fun!!

Showing off the Peace Pagoda in Lumbini.

The largest active mosque in India invites lots of pigeons to make homes.

This is Martin's arty shot of cow/rickshaw man and street... we were bored waiting for our food in the cafe.

Scary Martin hair!! But beautiful Himalayas behind.

Martin the ghost plays tricks on me in the night... poor sick little Katie just wanted a good nights sleep.

Me!

Angry boy wants to hunt down the monkeys for stealing all our clothes from the washing line... not a very nice Christmas pressie!!

Hello Taj Mahal... so beautiful!

In Khajuraho, enjoying the temples (Martin hunted down all the erotic sculptures!)

Locals doing their laundry in the dirty Ganga river, Varanasi.

The three of us (backpacks and all!) ride to the train station on a little cycle rickshaw... poor guy had to use his power legs!

Skinny sick Martin in our dirty hotel room, Calcutta. It was the cheapest deal we could find... now you can see why!

Groovy reflection of road outside Calcutta's Victoria Memorial

The Victoria Memorial - last remnant of the British Raj in India!

Pieces of India...

2007-01-10T14:34:00.000+08:00

Ok so I know I haven't blogged in months, but to be honest I just wansn't in the mood. We've also been travelling through northern India pretty fast, and going to some places where there was either no internet, or it was way too expensive for us paupers. The ironic thing is, we're now in Calcutta and leave for Bangkok tomorrow! Thailand here we come :)

So India. Well, it's crazy and colourful and annoying and beautiful and frustrating and fascinating. What can I say? We've been here over a month now and I'm quite ready to leave. Martin and I would love to come back one day to explore the south and other parts, but perhaps with a bit more money, right now I'm tired of slumbing it!

We (Martin, Chris, Emiko and I) started our journey off at the border with Nepal, Sunauli. From there we took a bus to Gorakhpur (the nearest town with a train station) and got a train ticket straight to Delhi. We were on a waiting list for sleeper class which is the lowest and cheapest form of sleeper that they do, just bare blue bunks with no blankets supplied. The (4 hours delayed) train journey was agony, it was so cold in the train that none of us could sleep, but that's all we wanted to do!!

We arrived in Delhi totally exhausted, but managed to find a decent hotel room that wasn't too expensive. We settled into the "Paharganj" area, known for its floods of tourists and seedy touts. At most, all we did was wander the streets, eat cheap Indian food (and no Delhi-belly for us horray!!) and enjoy the tv in the hotel room - our first time since we started travelling :)

Martin and I managed to do a little sightseeing in India's capital - we visited the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid (yes, all of 2 sights!!). I'm getting lazy with this blog so I'm going to steal info from wikipedia, sorry.

Good old Wiki has this to say about the Red Fort:
The Red Fort was the palace for Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan's new capital, Shahjahanabad, the seventh Muslim city in the Delhi site. He moved his capital from Agra in a move designed to bring prestige to his reign, and to provide ample opportunity to apply his ambitious building schemes and interests. The Red Fort stands at the eastern edge of Shahjahanabad, and gets its name from the massive wall of red sandstone that defines its four sides. The fort lies along the Yamuna River, which fed the moats that surround most of the wall. The wall at its north-eastern corner is adjacent to an older fort, the Salimgarh, a defense built by Islam Shah Sur in 1546.

Delhi's Red Fort

Beautiful corridors inside the Red Fort

Jama Masjid - the largest active mosque in India

After Delhi, Martin and I separated from Chris and Emiko (who planned on travelling different parts of India at different times to us) and took a trip up north to visit the beautiful hill station Kausani. This was to be where we would take our last glimpse of the Himalayas. Again, the trip was a bit of a nightmare... we had to take a train to Kathgodam, then a bus to Almora, then another bus to Kausani... all a bit stressful as we never knew if we were being charged the right amount or being charged "special tourist price". Frustrating.

Kausani was beautiful... we stayed a few days in a lovely little hotel room that looked onto the 300km-wide panoramic view of the mountains. It was stunning but freezing!! I caught a nasty cold, which seems to have stayed with me throughout India.

From Kausani we planned to head to Agra (so excited to see the Taj Mahal) but this again involved a crazy travel experience. After taking a jeep (hours in the car twisting and turning causing poor Martin to vomit!!) back down to Kathgodam, the train station town we had to wait for 6 hours to get a ticket for the train to Delhi. This proved impossible, even though we told the station master that we would pay anything (even first class) to get on that train, he wouldn't move. There were no tickets. We started to get desperate and at the last minute decided to take the unreserved seat carriage with the rest of the locals. Oh my... what a trip! I thought China was pretty bad but this had to top that!! There were so many people squashed into that carriage that I thought it would burst, people were sleeping in the luggage compartments, on the floor under the seats and there were even guys sitting on the top edge of the seats above our heads - yes, I had an ass pretty much on my head for the whole 10 hours!!!! LOVELY.

Needless to say, when we arrived in Delhi at 6am we were knackered! We went to eat some much needed breakfast and then made our way back to the train station to book a ticket to Agra. I must say that the foreign booking office in the New Delhi train station is a delight. It's quiet, nobody rushes you or even speaks to you. You can just sit there, plan your route and there are plenty of lovely men around to help you figure out which train you need. We decided then and there to book all our train tickets for the rest of our time in India... we didn't want to go through the hell of not being able to get a seat again!!

So from Delhi, we took the train to Agra for Christmas. A strange Christmas it was indeed. We spent Christmas day hand washing our clothes and phoning home. The real blow to the day only came that evening when Martin went to fetch our clothes from the line on the roof.... they were nowhere to be seen!!! Later he found them strewn about the roof in ruins!! The damn monkeys had decided to have a little Christmas fun. Grrrr... all the buttons had been ripped off, the clothes were filthy and there were teeth marks!! Merry Christmas Kate and Martin :)
After an all-too-spicy curry for dinner we set about re-washing our clothes and finding a place to hang them inside our hotel room.

On boxing day we were up at 6am and ready to be amazed. Taj Mahal here we come... and it's as beautiful as everyone says it is.

The story of the Taj Mahal is lovely too - the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan commissioned its construction as a mausoleum for his favourite wife, who was known as Mumtaz. She died after giving birth to his 14th child (yikes!!), and he was distraught. The whole thing (which combines Persian and Islamic designs) was built between 1631 and 1654 by about 22,000 men! It's made from white marble, and inlayed with thousands of precious and semi-precious stones.

From Agra we took a train to Jhansi, then a bus to Khajuraho.

This small town became famous in the late 19th century when a British dude discovered amazing medieval Hindu temples hidden in the jungle. Now it's one of the most popular tourist destinations in northern India. The temples were built over a span of a hundred years, from 950 to 1050, and they are amazing. They mainly received fame due to the presence of hundreds of erotic sculptures built into their walls.

How do they do this???

The temples at Khajuraho are beautiful and we enjoyed seeing them, but I can't say much for the town. It survives purely on tourism and this has made everyone greedy. The restaurants are ridiculously expensive and you can't walk 2 minutes down the road without someone asking you if you want to buy their pashmina or silver or clothes or bla bla bla. Annoying.

After Khajuraho we were heading to Varanasi. We almost didn't make the train because we were on a bus leaving at 2pm but 11km down the road we stopped and didn't move again for another 2 hours!!! There'd been a murder in the town and so traffic was stopped while everyone tried to sort it out. We could see the body lying in the road (covered with a sheet) and there were hundreds of men sitting around blocking traffic. The bus was almost half full of foreigners - all of us booked on the same train that was scheduled to leave at 7:30pm!! And we had a 5 hour journey ahead of us. Eeeek. Luckily the driver was aware we all had to get on the train and made up the time by driving like a maniac!! We arrived in Satna at about 7:10pm and all piled into auto-rickshaws to make the 1km journey to the station. We made it!!

As this was supposed to be our last overnight journey on a train, Martin and I had splashed out and bought expensive 2AC tickets (which means we were in an airconditioned car, with blankets and everything - special). I was so excited to sleep, but in the middle of the night I was almost in tears. Something was wrong with my right ear... I hadn't felt earache like that since I was a little girl - it was agony!! I lay in my bed crying from the pain and unable to sleep. When we finally arrived in Varanasi at 7am I at least had Martin awake and able to look after me. We took a rickshaw to the first hotel in our guide book, not in the mood to search around. We found it, and stayed.

Varanasi, known as the "city of temples and learning", is considered the holiest city in India for Hindus. It is also believed to be one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world since time immemorial. According to legend, the city was founded by the Hindu deity Shiva and all Hindus are supposed to make a pilgrimage here at least once in their lifetime. The river Ganga (Ganges), which flows through the city is sacred and pilgrims bathe in it to rid themselves of sins.

Again, I'm too lazy but you can read Wiki:
According to Hindus the river Ganga (feminine) is sacred. It is worshipped by Hindus and personified as a goddess, who holds an important place in the Hindu religion. Hindu belief holds that bathing in the river on certain occasions causes the forgiveness of sins and helps attain salvation. Many people believe that this will come from bathing in Ganga at any time. People travel from distant places to immerse the ashes of their kin in the waters of the Ganga; this immersion also is believed to send the ashes to heaven. People carry sacred water from the Ganges that is sealed in copper pots after making the pilgrimage to Kashi. It is believed that drinking water from the Ganga with one's last breath will take the soul to heaven.

I liked Varanasi for its amazing cultural significance, but that was about it. It's dirty, overcrowded, smelly and crazy. You can barely walk anywhere without being pushed and shoved aside by a cow or a cyclist. The most interesting thing for us were the "ghats" or steps that run along the city and into the river Ganges. Here you can see everything - people bathing in the river, people washing their clothes in the river, people throwing litter into the river, people drinking the river water, people playing cricket by the river... you name it and it's happening here.

A man cleanses himself in the river

It's quite disgusting really... buffalo poo in the river, sewage waste runs into it, dead bodies are dipped (sometimes thrown) into it and people still wash their clothes and their bodies in it. Crazy but SO interesting for us.

One day we took a boat ride along the river with Emiko (yes, we met up again - we think they're following us ha ha ha) and stopped at what's known as the 'burning ghat'. This is where the main cremations are done.... and you can see watch it all happening!! We went up to a balcony of a building nearby and watched the whole ceremony... there must have been at least 15 bodies burning all the time we were there. The custom is that the bodies are first wrapped in lots of cloth and silk, then brought to the river. They are dipped into the river, then wait (sometimes for hours) before a pyre is built for them and they can be burnt. The robes are removed (they leave a thin white sheet on) and they are placed on the burning flames. Then they are left until they turn to ashes. The smell was so overwhelming and I had to leave after about 30 minutes - I was afraid I'd throw up!!

After 2 days of dust and dirt and sickly smells, Martin and I prepare to leave Varanasi. Our original plan was to visit Bodh Gaya (the place where Buddha attained enlightenment) but when we arrived at the train station and found our train was 8 hours delayed we made a new plan. Forget Bodh Gaya, we were going straight to Calcutta and then getting out of India!! I think by this time we'd just had enough. Almost 7 months of travelling and we were both getting tired. We just need a beach somewhere to catch a tan and relax!!

So direct to Calcutta it was, and after a bit of wheeling and dealing with the train ticket man, we managed it! It meant getting off the train at 4am and switching carriages onwards to Calcutta but that was fine with us.

We arrived at about 2pm, knackered and feeling sick again. My ear was still bad, I hadn't been able to hear out of it since Varanasi. Plus, I was feeling dizzy and dehydrated. Martin helped me get into a bus and across the famous Howrah Bridge to Calcutta side. When we got out of the bus I was so dizzy that I had to sit down for a while before I could walk with my backpack on to the cheap hotel area. But we made it!!! Martin looked around for a cheap deal, of which there were none!! But our hotel is nice enough and not totally out of our budget.

The first 5 days in Calcutta we spent in our hotel room, both of us suffering with vomit and diarrhea and me with stomach cramps. Eventually we made it to the hospital and the lovely doctor sorted us out with drugs. Horray!!

Once better, we ventured out to do a little sightseeing, taking in the Victoria Memorial - the last remnant of the British Raj (in power till 1911) here in India.

It's very beautiful - a mixture between the Taj Mahal and the Houses of Parliment!! The white marble they used to build it comes from the same mine in Rajasthan where they took marble for the Taj Mahal.

So now it's goodbye India for Martin and I!!! No more Indian "thali" (all inclusive meal).

Tomorrow it's Hello Thailand for us :)

Gorkha, Bandipur, Pokhara and Lumbini...

2006-12-04T15:16:00.000+08:00

GORKHA

'It is Better to die than to be a coward’
- motto of the world famous Gurkha Soldiers

The word ‘Gurkha’ comes from Gorkha, a small town 90km north of the Kathmandu valley. Martin was really keen on making the trip to Gorkha because he thought there'd be a cool manly museum there all about the soldiers. In fact, we found no such museum but enjoyed the town very much anyway. When we arrived it was already quite late in the afternoon and I wasn't too excited about wandering around cheap hotel hunting. Luckily for us Chris has been learning some of the Nepali script and managed to find us a great "hotel and lodge" run by a lovely local family. It was great, we only paid Rs 150 (just over a pound!) for the room with 4 beds and even though the owner man kept apologising for not having a shower we told him it was fine, we're so used to not showering for days!! (sies). Each day we ate dinner at his restaurant downstairs, a crazy Rs 45 for all you can eat dhal bhat. Dhal bhat is a typical Nepali dish which foreigners soon get sick of because its the cheapest and most easily available dish all across the country! It usually consists of dhal (lentil soup), bhat (rice), tarkari (veg curry) ochar (pickle), saag (spinach) and sometimes curd (wierd home-made yoghurt that often tastes like vodka!) for pudding. I've been eating quite a bit recently as I'm trying to ease my tongue and tastebuds into the spice before I hit India! Eeeek.

While we were in Gorkha we spent one day visiting the Gorkha Durbar, which is a fort, palace and temple all rolled into one. It was built on top of the mountain with strategic intent by the kings and generals of the House of Gorkha for their planned expansion across the country and beyond. The walk up the mountainside took us about 2 hours in the hot midday sun, but when we arrived the views were magnificent! I didn't enjoy the actual palace very much, it was really small and looked just like many others I've seen before.

Gorkha Durbar

We spent the other days wandering around the town - it was lovely and untouristed, quite a change from Kathmandu. On the morning we left for Bandipur I thought I'd go crazy and pierce my nose... little did I know how very "local" Gorkha was. A friend we'd made a few days before offered to help direct me to a jewelers, where they could do the deed. But all I needed was 5 minutes in that tiny shop to realise I was definately crazy and changed my mind. The young teenager in the shop told us his older brother (who usually does this) was out, but he could "give it a try". He started sharpening the end of an earing (not needle!) and said he'd just use this quickly, then push a nose ring stud in. What??? He had filthy hands, and when I asked if he was going to clean his hands/the piercing tool/the nose ring, he said "oh.... ok" and fetched a dirty bowl of dirty water that looked like it came from the toilet (pre-flush!!!). Say no more... I was back down the other end of the street before he even turned around.

The streets of Gorkha are narrow and wind up and down the mountainside

BANDIPUR

After 3 days in Gorkha, we headed west to Bandipur, a supposedly untouched Newari village still with original buildings etc. What a mistake! It was nice but after being added to the most recent edition of Lonely Planet Nepal, it was catering for rich tourists beginning to end. Such a small village, and it had a huge hotel there quoting "only US$22 a night". Martin and I stayed in a lovely little lodge that mainly acted as a hostel for small boys. From what I gathered, these boys were all orphans, housed there so they could attend the local school. Sweet kids - but a pain in the ass to wait for the one and only toilet in the morning!

While we were there we visited Tundikhel: a sports field/garden/grassy area. From it you're supposed to be able to see from the Himalayan peaks all the way down to the valley 500m below you. Unfortunately it was really cloudy when we went, so all we could see was the fence through which we were looking! We stayed up there for a few hours chatting to a sweet girl from Pokhara. She was very excited to hear that we were going to Pokhara the next day, and kept telling us about cool things we could see/do there.

I'm glad we only stayed in Bandipur for one day, the local food was all overpriced, there wasn't that much to see and it was too cold and cloudy to see any of the 'great views'.

POKHARA

I loved Pokhara! Martin and I found a lovely hotel in Lakeside where we paid only Rs 125 (less than one pound!) for a double room with bathroom! Usually tourists stay in Pokhara before or after doing a major trek like the Annapurna circuit... this means that it has all the luxuries and treats foreigners could ask for. The best thing was that the views were gorgeous (lakes, mountains...), the food amazing, but compared to Thamel in Kathmandu, there's no crazy traffic or narrow streets. We stayed for just over a week, eating like kings (or pigs!) and enjoying being spoilt again. We did some shopping, hired a motorbike for the day and hiked up to the World Peace Pagoda (which was built by the Japanese on top of a mountain that looks towards Phewa lake and the Annapurna mountain range behind - beautiful).

Annapurna mountains with Phewa Tal (lake) in front

LUMBINI

From Pokhara, we (being Martin, me, Chris and Emiko) took a 10 hour bus journey down to Lumbini - a famous buddhist pilgrimage site as it's the birthplace of buddha. We stayed for a day only sleeping in the Nepali temple pilgrim accomodation for "donation only". Poor Martin had an awkward moment when he went to pay our donation, as the man quoted him a price double what we wanted to give! He had no right to state any amount really, so we left rather angry. Oh well, it their world "foreigner = money" so its hard.

We spent the whole day wandering around the newly-created 'gardens' which are about 5km long and 3km wide. First we saw the Mayadevi temple, which supposedly was built on the exact place where buddha was born.

Then we spent the rest of the day walking from one country's temple to another... we all thought the Thai temple was the most beautiful (mainly because it was one of the only ones that was finished and we could walk around inside etc).

Just as the day was coming to a close we reached the Peace Pagoda, also built by the Japanese (so it looks very similar in style to the one in Pokhara). We stayed there for a while, enjoying the sunset and watching a huge crowd of monks walk around it as part of their pilgrimage.

Pictures from Tibet and Nepal...

2006-12-02T15:12:00.000+08:00

Here are some pictures we've taken over the last 2 months or so - from Tibet through to Nepal.

High above Yamdrok-tso - day 1 of our journey down to Nepal.

The 4x4 jeep peeps: Nils (German), me, Martin, Chris (Canadian), Emiko (Japanese) and our Tibetan tea provider (trying to hide her face with a juice bottle I think). This was just before the crazy "Do you get along with your family?" incident!!

First sighting of Mt. Qomolangma (Everest)!!! Gorgeous views of the Himalayas :)

What's the first thing one does when one arrives in Nepal??? Climb on top of the roof of a huge bus for a 2hour hell-ride of course!! Scary scary stuff.

This gorgeous little kid is our favourite play-thing in Thamel, Kathmandu. She lives near the internet cafe we use and often likes to provide us with sticky treats :)

I love baby elies!! This one was so cute, and kept eating apples out of my hands!

Crossing a river inside the jungle at Chitwan. There are many scary crocs in the river so you can't swim (don't listen to anything Martin says!!).

Excited and ready for the elephant ride... little did we know the smiles on our faces were about to turn into screams of terror!!!

Elephant bathing here we come :) Martin and I climbed on like this, using her trunk as leverage... cool!

Us showing off the sunset. Everything on the other side of the river is the jungle - although that 'boundary' doesn't always stop the animals!

In Gorkha - home to the famous British soliders. We climbed up the mountain for over an hour to reach the Gorkha Durbar (Palace), which is considered a temple, palace and fort all in one!

Here's Martin with our lodge/restaurant friend in Gorkha. He provided us with typical Nepali all-you-can eat "dhal bhat" (rice, lentil soup, veg curry and spinach) every night. The first night I ate so much that I got stomach ache - what a pig!!

Elephant Escapades in Chitwan National Park

2006-11-30T17:37:00.000+08:00

Chitwan National Park is Nepal's biggest nature reserve, covering 932 sq. km of swamps, grassland and dense jungle!

We arrived on Nov 6th, after taking a local bus to Tandi Bazaar and then walking 7km to Sauraha (a small village north of the park on the bank of the Rapti river). The main reason we walked all that way carrying all our bags under the midday sun was because when we arrived in Tandi we were almost bowled over by a mob of Nepalis trying to sell us their hotel/tour package. It was crazy, for about 15 minutes we had 15-20 men surrounding us, shoving their hotel brochures under our noses and screaming in our ears about what a good deal it was! Eventually we got so annoyed that we scorned all their offers of jeep/rickshaw rides in favour of our legs. When we finally arrived in Sauraha we almost cried as we saw all the hotel touts waiting for us there!! Luckily we managed to find a nice cheap riverside hotel despite the mob - one room with bathroom for Rs100 (about 20p each)!!

Over the next few days we did some more relaxing, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine and the quietness of nature (such a difference to the crazy streets of Thamel in Kathmandu). We found out about independant jungle tours and elephant rides, and also spent a day walking to the local elephant breeding centre. We arrived at about 4pm after Martin, Chris and I waded through the river (determined not to pay any fee for using the canoe). Emiko didn't want to get wet at all (I did have to do it in my panties as the water came up to my waist!) so she took the canoe, and only told us afterwards that it was free! Oh well, we definately gave the locals something to talk about anyway. The breeding centre was cool, it had about 20 elephants, all with babies ranging from a few months to over 2 years old. The babies were so cute, and we spent a few hours there trying to feed them fruit and stroking their strange leathery skin!

Mummy with two babies

On the 3rd day we searched for a new hotel as our cheap deal had turned rather nasty - the hotel boys were bugging us every few minutes, wanting us to take their tour of the park. We ended up walking further down the river away from Sauraha and finding a lovely quiet (if more expensive) place.

Once the hotel was found we got ready for our 2 day jungle trek. We left at 6:30am the next day with our 2 guides, ready to find some exciting animals! First came a canoe ride down the river, which was beautiful in the early morning mist. Then came the trekking. Our main guide, Bishnu, was great - he'd brought binoculars and a book of birds with him and every few minutes he stopped to show us another species (quite a twitcher!). That first day we saw crocodiles, barking deer, rhesus monkeys, wild boar and a one-horned rhino! The rhino was of course the most exciting animal we saw, and we were so lucky as later we met lots of other groups who went for 2 days without seeing one. Horray!

The nearly-extinct one-horned rhino

At about 5pm we reached the edge of the jungle (you have to leave by sunset) and took a canoe over the river to a little village where we spent the night. We were sweaty, hungry and tired and soon angery as the prices of everything (food, room, water...) were hugely inflated just because tourists have no other option. We ate our measly dinner quickly and were asleep by 8:30pm.

The next day we were up at 6am ready to go again, grumbling loudly after receiving 2 warm pieces of stale break as "breakfast". The first thing we did after getting back into the jungle was visit a crocodile breeding farm. At the farm they also had a beautiful bengal tiger in a big cage thing... I know - a cage! But they had a reason behind it - the tigers mother had taught her cubs to eat human flesh (eek!!) after attacking some locals near the park, and apparantly once a tiger tastes humans it won't go back to eating other animals so it was too dangerous for the park people to leave it wandering around. The mother and another cub died somehow, so they rescued this tiger when it was just a baby and have raised it ever since.

This second day was more grueling than the day before as we had longer to walk. I got really bad prickly heat on the back of my legs, as well as blisters, because my sweaty dirty socks were rubbing on my skin and the last few hours walking became pure agony! When we finally arrived back in Sauraha I was hobbling and almost in tears from the pain (over 40km in 2 days.... aargh!). When I took off my pants and socks for a shower that evening everyone was shocked.... my legs looked disgusting, red rash, blisters, bites etc. Nice.

The day after we got back we'd already planned a 2 hour ride through the jungle on an elephant (thank goodness no more walking for me!). We set off at about 4pm - with Chris, Emiko, Martin and I all squashed on a small platform on top of the elephants back. The elephant's driver (who works with the same elephant all its life) sat in front of us balancing on it's neck. We were with 2 other elephants and all their tourists (one especially annoying American woman was talking so loudly we knew we'd never see any exciting animals!) plodding through the undergrowth. Riding on an elephant is definately the most uncomfortable form of transport I've ever taken... the elie took such huge lumbering steps that our little platform lurched left to right, back to front, up and down... all we could do was cling on to the hand rests.

During the first hour we saw some deer and a wild boar, but it was during the second hour that things got interesting - we still don't know what happened but we're all pretty convinced that something spooked or angered our elephant.... she just suddenly started acting like a crazy thing - she was 'growling' (a kind of low grumble that I could feel with my feet through her skin) and refusing to walk forward. The driver started hitting her hard with a metal rod, which made us furious and Martin even asked him to stop... but he soon turned around and said "very danger danger", so that shut us up. He also made hand movements to show the elephant charging, and that got me even more worried! Soon the situation got even worse - our elie was actually charging through the jungle and trumpeting like crazy!! We had no idea what was going on, I just held on and prayed that we'd all make it back safely. She soon set off another elephant so there were two huge elephants growling and trumpeting and scaring the tourists they were carrying! At one point I managed to take a video when we were in the river and the sound was almost deafening! After a while the drivers managed to separate them, and while the other elephant lumbered off peacefully, ours was still upset about something. She started backing up the track and grabbing bushes with her trunk and throwing them in the air. It was all really scary. Luckily for us she did eventually calm down and we made it safely back to the town.

Now there's something you don't see/do everyday!!

Over the next few days we pretty much did nothing - just lazed about in the sun and read books. Marvellous. We did eventually do one more thing while we were there and that was washing an elephant. Sounds mad but it was so much fun!! Chris and I rode "Basanti" the elephant (bareback - the hair was really scratchy on our bare legs!) all the way down to the river and then into the water we went!!! Emiko and Martin joined in and soon we were all splashing about trying to stay on the elephants back while it played in the water. The driver would yell "Chhhop" and she would fill her trunk with water and spray us all!! Fun fun fun!

I can't say I was able to stand up like this, but I did manage sitting down on her back

After about 10 days at Chitwan, we finally decided to head to other parts of Nepal. We went to Gorkha, Bandipur, Pokhara, Lumbini and back to Kathmandu again. Will blog those adventures soon....

Kathmandu

2006-11-29T15:43:00.000+08:00

We arrived in Nepal's capital on Sun Oct 29th, fully exhausted from our trip through Tibet. We set out to do what we'd all been dying to do for so long - nothing! We all stayed together in a hotel in Thamel (the main tourist area of Kathmandu), which meant that we were unfortunately surrounded by tourists everywhere we went. But it did have an up side - the food!!! The variety of restaurants in Thamel mean that you can pretty much get any meal you want at any time of the day, which was luxury for us after months in China and Tibet surviving on cheap rice and noodles! The first night I ate a fat bolognaise pizza... so yummy! Each morning we ate at the same place, which serves the best breakfast in town - eggs, toast, hash browns, tomatoes, tea, muesli with fruit and yoghurt... all for about 60p!!! Crazy.

Thamel street

We stayed in Ktm for almost 10 days and out of those 10, we probably only spent 2 days actually doing anything constructive. Otherwise all we did was sleep, relax and eat! We had pizza, Japanese food (Emiko introduced us to all kinds of delights!), steak, curry, chips and countless cups of milk tea! Of the two days where we got off our lazy bums to do something, we spent one day sightseeing and the other meeting a very interesting couple.

Our sightseeing day included visiting Durbar ("palace") Square, Indra Chowk and around. Durbar square is the heart of the old city - its no longer full of royals but it is still considered important.

Durbar Square

I thought the most interesting building there was the Kumari Baha, an 18th century Newari palace which houses the living human goddes of Kathmandu - the Kumari (literally means 'virgin' in Nepali). The Kumari is a Newari Buddhist girl considered to be the living incarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga - the girl who is chosen remains in this palace and lives the privaledged life of a goddess until she reaches puberty. After that, the goddess-spirit leaves her and she has to return to her family. The current Royal Kumari, Preeti Shakya, was installed on July 10, 2001 at the age of four.

The Kumari

On another day we went to Jawala Khel, an area renound for its expat residents. There we met up with Rob and Naomi, a couple who've been living in Ktm for about 3 years. We met up with them mainly to talk about Naomi's job. She works as a fundraiser for a local organisation working against women trafficking in Nepal, Serve Nepal . Serve Nepal is a Christian charitable organization founded in 2001 that works to fight and prevent sexual exploitation and trafficking in and from Nepal.

It was so interesting to talk to her as she's been volunteering/working in Nepal for 10 years now. She does a lot of fundraising locally and in Canada and is so passionate about her work that she got Martin and I all fired up too! It inspired me in terms of what I want to do with my life and what kind of jobs I'll be looking for when I get home.

After a few days in Kathmandu we said goodbye to our German friend Nils - he's in Thailand now enjoying the sun, sea and sand. Emiko and Chris are still travelling with us... they just can't seem to leave :)

We've actually been travelling around Nepal for about 3 weeks and arrived back in Ktm yesterday. We went to Chitwan National Park, Gorkha, Bandipur, Pokhara and Lumbini - I'll blog about them soon!

The Friendship Highway - Lhasa to Nepal

2006-10-31T16:51:00.000+08:00

DAY 1:

Lhasa - Yamdrok-tso Lake - Gyantse

While we were in Lhasa, we spent a few days trying to find traveling partners for the trip to Nepal. We wanted 5 people as that would make the price much better - even if it meant being a little uncomfortable in the jeep. We left signs up at lots of the hotels around and just waited. Eventually, after one day of mad organizing, we had a group of 5 people - and the best part was that they were just as budget conscious as us!!

So on Mon, Oct 23rd we set out with our new friends - Chris (from Canada) and his girlfriend Emiko (from Japan), and Nils (from Germany). We had all checked out the car and the driver the night before and agreed that it was ok (who worries about bald tires anyway???). We were going in a slightly older jeep but figured it was best as it could just about accommodate 2 people in the front with the driver. Our driver's name was "Nima", which means "the sun" in Tibetan. Nils thought this was great as on his trip into Lhasa, he had a driver whose name meant "the moon"!!

Our first stop was the beautiful Yamdrok-tso Lake, which we viewed from the mountain pass of 4990m. The scenery was stunning, but the crowds of Tibetans flaunting their yaks or dogs to take photos of was a pain in the ass. Most of the dogs looked ridiculous, with fluffy collars standing out about 30cm from their heads. The yaks weren't much better, and only the crazy Chinese tourists were really making use of them.

Yamdrok-tso Lake is one of the three holiest lakes in Tibet, with pilgrims flocking here every summer to pray and receive blessings. Most Tibetan pilgrims believe that the water can make the old young again and make the children smarter.

Beautiful Yamdrok-tso...

After the lake-viewing, we snaked our way back down the mountain side and continued along the road towards Gyantse. We arrived in Gyantse at about 5pm and asked to go straight to see the Monastery. The monastery was founded in 1418 by the first Panchen Lama Reldrup. In the early 20th century, the town and monastery were attacked by British soldiers and you can still see some bullet holes today! The most famous part of the monastery is the kumbum, which is a multi-story Buddhist chapel kind of thing. There are supposedly only 3 kumbums in existence today and the biggest and best is this one we went to see.

The Kumbum with its 108 chapels on four floors

"The Eyes" at the Gyantse Kumbum in the Palcho Monastery

After a wander around the monastery for a few hours, we headed back to the town area and found some dinner and got to bed. It was getting really cold and everyone was starting to sniff! That night poor Martin couldn't sleep at all because the freezing cold air was affecting his lungs, and so I was up all night too worrying about him. Shame.

DAY 2:

Gyantse - Shigatse

After not too much sleep, everyone was just keen to get on the road and get to Shigatse... which we did. The journey only took about four hours, so when we arrived it was still quite early. Chris and Emiko decided to go and see the monastery there, which is supposed to be the main one for the Panchen Lamas. I stayed behind to nurse a poor sick Martin who huddled under the blankets in our freezing cold room! We had managed to find some flu medicine and vit c etc that morning, so we were doing the best we could.

That evening we had an interesting meal in a little Tibetan tea house. The whole area had a huge power cut so we had dinner by candlelight (so romantic!). I say interesting because Martin and I ordered stir fried veggies only to be handed a plate of deep fried onion pieces... mmmm.... The rest of the food was yummy though, and they had lots of hot tea which was great!

DAY 3:

Shigatse - Lhatse - Shegar

This morning we thought we'd be leaving around 9am (same as the day before), so went through the painful process of getting out of warm beds at about 8am - doesn't sound too early I know but believe me it was cold!! The only problem came later when we couldn't find our trusty driver Nima... apparently he hadn't slept at the hotel that night and was nowhere to be found! He sauntered in at about 11am, to find 5 grumpy looking faces waiting for him. We couldn't be angry at him for too long though because he was just always smiling and laughing at everything... plus our Tibetan and his English were about on par - not so good!

Off we set to make it to Lhatse for a late lunch break. I don't remember much about Lhatse except that it was a dirty dusty town filled with beggars. Heartbreaking but really difficult too, as some of them would just cling on to our clothes and walk half-way down the street just hanging on!

Traditional Tibetan doorway cover

From there we drove to Shegar... getting close to Everest Base Camp now! We found a cheap hotel and spent what was left of the sunlight wandering around the town. In the late afternoon we found ourselves in a little Tibetan tea house again, with the loveliest woman serving us sweet milk tea. She spoke very little English (only things like "milk tea", "noodle soup" etc) but we entertained her by using Chris' Tibetan phrase book. After a few hours we decided to have dinner there too and Martin got very excited about the idea of teaching her a little English from the book. Nobody knows why, but for some hilarious reason he picked "Do you get along with your family?", which our new friend took to be a very important phrase and set about learning it. It was so funny - she just repeated and repeated it until we all knew that it would be going round and round in our heads all night long!!

Tibetan costume (I love the jewelry!)

DAY 4:

Shegar - EBC - Rongbuk

Everest Base Camp day arrived!! We all got up really excited and went off in the jeep to get the permits and everything else we needed for the trip. The only problem I had was that I was now starting to feel really bad... the same stomach cramps from before (in Lhasa) were me plaguing again. Not sure where they came from (unless it was the rather cold and dodgy looking momo - Tibetan dumpling - I'd eaten the night before) but it was really painful.

From Shegar we drove to Rongbuk Monastery, which is the last stop before the trek to base camp. The drive was stunning... we were so high up that we could see the Himalayas right in front of us :0)

Not a bad view 'ey?

It was soooo cold when we arrived and the wind was icy. We decided to set off straight away on the trek, as we didn't know how long it would take and we wanted to arrive before dark. The plan was to walk there with minimal stuff, find a place to stay (our guide books told us we could sleep in a tent up there) and get some food.

Martin was worried about me and my cramps so sent me off in a jeep that was going up to the base camp with some other foreigners. I felt bad leaving the four of them behind, having to walk for a few hours at that altitude, but there was no way I'd make it feeling as bad as I did. As soon as I arrived all our plans went down the drain... base camp was deserted! The jeep driver explained to me in Chinese that everyone had left for the winter - it was too cold to be sleeping up there at this time of the year. Damn it!!!

As I'd arrived about 3 hours before the others I had to wait up there for them. It started out ok as there were other foreigners around and the sun was shining... but it soon got worse... the others took the jeep back down to Rongbuk Monastery and I was left all alone surrounded by the tallest mountains in the world... weirdly amazing but TOO cold! I sat beside the toilet block to try and get out of the wind and just prayed that they'd arrive sooner!! I lost all feeling in my feet and just sat huddled up with myself watching the crows trying to find food.

8848m high - Mt. Qomolangma (the Tibetan name for Mt. Everest)

After what felt like a decade, I saw two small shapes in the distance - Martin and Nils were the first to arrive. I had to give them the bad news that we wouldn't be staying there for the night and soon after that Martin and I left to trek down the mountain again. We didn't want to be caught out in the dark! We found Emiko and Chris further down the path and relayed the news. After about 2 hours of walking I could feel my feet again, but we were still far from the monastery... I was just dreaming of hot water and warm blankets! Suddenly we heard a jeep in the distance - it was Nima coming to rescue us!! Horray :) He drove back to pick up the others and then fetched us on the way through again. Hot instant noodles awaited us at the "hotel".

That night was terrible... we all slept in our clothes huddled up for warmth but still barely managed to sleep. I was in agony with my stomach cramps, but still refusing to take anti-biotics as I don't like just popping pills.

DAY 5:

Rongbuk - Old Tingri - Zhangmu (Nyalam)

Possibly the worst 'getting out of bed' moment ever! We all struggled to get ourselves into the jeep, but we're excited at the thought of going down in altitude. My tummy was just getting ridiculously painful and even after relenting to Martin and agreeing to take the antibiotics, I spent most of the trip down to Old Tingri in tears. What made matters way worse was the road... never before have I seen a bumpier, more-pot-hole-filled "road" - Africa has competition!! Even with a 4x4 it was agony in the car, it felt like being inside a washing machine!

In Old Tingri we stopped only for lunch, of which I managed about 2 mouthfulls of rice. I spent most of the time outside in the sunshine with Martin trying to make me feel better. I'm sure the altitude wasn't helping either!

From Old Tingri we drove to Zhangmu, the border town. This drive was wonderful... the scenery changed before our eyes from stark snowy landscape to green trees, waterfalls and valleys. Stunning. It felt so good to see trees again and to be able to breathe easily.

The border town nestled in the green mountains

We opted for a hotel right by the border, and said goodbye to our driver Nima. We thanked him for taking us all that way without a single burst tire :) That night we treated ourselves to a Western meal at a nice restaurant... but sadly, my stomach decided to reject the nice spaghetti bolognaise and I had to rush outside to throw up in the street. Nice.

DAY 6:

Zhangmu - Nepal

Border crossing day arrived and we got up early. Nils was so excited as he was heading straight to a river rafting spot in northern Nepal, but the rest of us were just happy to get over the border.

Goodbye Tibet!

After crossing out of Tibet, there's a 9km walk down the mountain to the Nepali border crossing. Martin and I decided to walk down and enjoy the sunshine, with Chris, Emiko and Nils taking our heavy backpacks with them in a taxi. It took us a few hours, and when we arrived we couldn't find the others!!! Had they crossed the border with our stuff? Were they eating lunch somewhere? Help! After a few arguments Martin and I decided to cross the border ourselves and try to find them on the other side. We finally found them eating curry in a little restaurant right by the visa office! Handy.

Hello Nepal!

Once we'd paid for and got our 2-month Nepali visas, we were off to find the bus. The four of us had decided to follow Nils in his white water rafting adventure at Borderlands Resort, a good introduction to Nepal we thought. We found a bus and first thing we're told is to get on the roof as it was full inside. Nice. The journey was scary though, Emiko and I just held on for dear life as the bus lurched down the mountainside on a single lane road. We had to duck often as the bus passed under electricity cables and I kept my eyes closed a lot of time when we had to screetch to a halt when another bus came in the other direction!!!

That night we lived in luxury, sleeping in fancy tents right by the river, eating delicious Nepali food and having our first hot shower in over a week!!! We'd decided not to go rafting as it was too expensive but stayed the next day to watch our friend Nils do it.

And that was our trip from Tibet to Nepal!

The Roof of the World - Tibet

2006-10-22T20:54:00.000+08:00

LHASA:

We arrived in Lhasa on Thursday, Oct 12, after a wonderful journey on the new train. Lhasa lies at an altitude of 3650m, which means most people get altitude sickness when they arrive. We were lucky, because parts of the southern silk road are quite high too, so we managed to feel just about ok. We did nothing much for the first two days of being there anyway, just in case :)

Lhasa is a beautiful city, with an impressive heritage of thousands of years of mysterious and spiritual history. In the Tibetan language, Lhasa means "The Land of the Gods", and is the center of Tibet's politics, economy and culture. We stayed in Lhasa about 10 days, doing a few day trips here and there, but mostly just enjoying the Tibetan culture and the vibrancy of the city.

I managed to get really sick a few days after we arrived - not altitude sickness, but stomach cramps. It was awful, I could barely move from the pain. Martin had to take me to the local hospital, which was a treat in itself! The whole place looked deserted when we arrived, and it was only after about 20 minutes walking that we discovered other forms of life!! The halls of the part of the hospital that was being used were full of screaming patients, some hopping around with broken legs/ankles just waiting to be attended to. I don't remember that much of the hospital visit as I was in so much pain, but basically they did blood tests and checked my oxygen levels, blood pressure etc... and then after all that they weren't sure what was wrong. Eventually after about 4 different doctors checked my results, they came back and said that I have some form of gastroenteritis (like Martin and I had before in Taiwan) only this time I wasn't vomiting or having diarrhea. They put me on a course of antibiotics and painkillers and that was that (after giving me a painkiller injection in my ass!!).

In Lhasa there are many temples and monasteries to see, and we by no means saw them all. We spent some time enjoying the views of the Potala Palace, chief residence of the Dalai Lamas in the past. It's really impressive, but we didn't pay to go in as we were told it is rather over-run by Chinese police.

The Potala Palace.

The temple we enjoyed the most was the Jokhang Temple, spiritual heart of Lhasa and Tibet. It's located in the middle of Lhasa, at the Barkhor Square. The temple was constructed by King Songtsen Gampo starting in the year 639, and has remained a center of Buddhist pilgrimage for centuries.

We were determined to follow the pilgrims when we went there, so queued with them for over an hour to get into the main temple (other tourists push past and wave their entrance tickets to get in first!!). It was so interesting to see all the pilgrims walking the 'kora' (circumambulatory walk around the temple) and watch them in their daily devotions.

Pilgrims prostating themselves before the Jokhang

Barkhor Square facing the Jokhang Temple

On other days in Lhasa, we spent lots of time wandering the streets and bargaining for things at the Barkhor Market. I bought some lovely Tibetan jewelry and otherwise gazed wistfully at all the other divine things I wanted!! Being budget travellers we have to watch the pockets :)

Market stalls

NAMTSO LAKE:

Namtso Lake is the highest salt-water lake in the world, at 4718m. It's known as one of the most beautiful lakes in Tibet, and has been a popular pilgrimage destination for centuries.

We had to wait for 3 days before we were given the OK to go because at this time of year there's a lot of snow around and often the mountain passes are covered and cars can't cross. There's also the danger that we could get trapped at the lake for days, so a lot of tour operators won't do the trip. Luckly we were eventually told that we could go and our group of 11 people all squashed into the minivan excitedly! It's about 260km to the lake from Lhasa, and it gets colder all the way out. We all got out at the snowy pass (5190m) and were immediately struck by the cold. The wind was really strong too, so we only managed about 10 minutes up there, which was lucky as I was dizzy from the altitude as soon as I stepped out of the bus!

Our gang at the mountain pass before the lake - 5190m.

The lake was stunning, rimmed by snowy mountains and hills, and we spent a lovely 2 hours there enjoying the views. Martin even managed a toe-dipping session, but I was too chicken.

Beautiful Namtso ("Holy Lake" in Tibetan)

GANDEN MONASTERY:

Ganden is one of the 'great three' Gelukpa university monasteries of Tibet, and lies on Wangbur mountain, about 50km from Lhasa. The monastery was almost completely destroyed during the Chinese 'liberation' of Tibet, but since the 1980s, a small part has been re-built and is in use today.

To get there via public transport, we had to queue up for the bus with the pilgrims at 6:30am. After about an hours drive, we arrived at the bottom of the mountain and were told that we had to walk the rest of the way up because there was construction work on the road. Yikes, at an elevation of about 4500m, its pretty hard to hike up mountains!! I had quite a bit of trouble getting up to the monastery, even falling over from dizziness at one point, but it was all worth it in the end. The monastery, although very dilapidated, is beautiful and the views are gorgeous.

Ganden Monastery

Yak-butter candles

Martin and I enjoyed walking around the monastery and the hills around it, even though I have now decided to never follow Martin down a mountain path... it doesn't lead to good things!!!

Pictures from around China Part II

2006-10-17T19:45:00.000+08:00

Horray for an internet cafe that allows us to access our memory card. Enjoy!

Luxury in the Hyatt Hotel, Xi'an. Happy Birthday to us!!

Resting amid the flowers after a walk in high altitude at Mati Si, Zhangye.

Martin sleeping with the local migrants during a bus journey somewhere along the northern silk road.

Kate showing how huge the fort walls are in Jiayuguan. (In the desert somewhere)

Showing off our new, sexy "thermal" underwear for winter in Jingtieshan.

The Magao Grottoes in Dunhuang.

Martin enjoying his yoghurt at the Ya Dan Landforms, just outside Dunhuang.

Sandy fun!

The "cresent moon" part of Kanas Lake.

Beautiful Kanas Lake from above.

The scary sanitary conditions we put up with while travelling...

Playing with colours on the camera...

Me showing off stunning Karakul Lake!

Us with our new friend Ally, scaring the locals by lying on the road in Ruoqiang.

Standing at 5190m high in Tibet, Namtso Lake in the background!!

Traversing the Southern Silk Road.

2006-10-13T20:05:00.000+08:00

KASHGAR

Martin and I left Kashgar on Friday morning, heading for Hotan. We had a fairly nice day bumping around in the bus and reading our books. The only problem came after about 4 hours of driving when the driver suddenly switched on the tv, and played the most awful movie ever. The volume was so loud I suspected all the passengers would forevermore have hearing problems, and the acting and filming was atrocious. I mean seriously bad. At one stage, the heroine of the movie gets angry with an old man and bites his neck, the camera slowly moves onto her face afterwards and she is covered with tomato-sauce-looking-blood which is drawn in a perfect circle around her mouth. Bad.

HOTAN

Once in Hotan, we found a decent-ish hotel, with 2 beds lining one side of the wall. The room had a kettle (a first for us), a tv that didn't work, and a strange odour. There was no bathroom for women on our floor, so I just used what was available and scared a fair few men.

We spent the afternoon trying to get a bus ticket to Qiemo, which, according to our guide, is a 48 hour drive of hell. The ladies in the ticket office of the bus station when we arrived were SO unhelpful that we almost gave up. But eventually some kind man took pity on us and explained that we needed to go to the East Bus Station (You'd think that would have been pretty easy for one of the ladies to say to us wouldn't you???). Once at the east bus station, getting a ticket was easy peasy. The kind lady there even explained to us how to take the local bus in town to a nice hotel. Sweet.

The next morning we took a taxi to the bus station (we didn't get out of bed early enough for the bus! oops) and got on the sleeper bus ready for the long trip. We met a new friend that day, Ally from Scotland. He is travelling for a month from Kazakhstan to Beijing, and is just great. We're going all the way to Lhasa together.

The road from Hotan to Qiemo looks like this pretty much all the way

QIEMO

The drive to Qiemo was quite bizarre. We, of course, were ready for a 48 hour marathon, but after only 10 hours we arrived!!! What was going on?? We were totally confused, thinking we'd only stopped for a pee break, and I had to ask about 6 different people before we believed them.

So while we tried to get past the wierd feeling of arriving at our destination about 38 hours before we thought we'd arrive, we ate some supper. It was rather strange: a huge bowl of fried-ish cabbage with some transparent noodles thrown in, and rice. After supper we had to take a taxi into the town area, about a 10 minute ride, and there we found a great 3-bed room with a bathroom (a luxury Martin and I haven't experienced for months!!). By this time it was about 1:30am, and all I could do was have a shower and crawl into bed.

The next morning pretty much followed the same routine as the days before and the days to come... wake up, force body out of bed, scramble to throw everything into bag, make way to bus station, get on bus.

RUOQIANG

The bus to Ruoqiang was uneventful, it took only about 6 hours, and I spent the entire time reading my new book that I borrowed from Ally ("The Time-Traveller's Wife"), a good one.

We arrived pretty early in the afternoon, so had a nice day to wander around and enjoy the little village. We first found a place to sleep: we managed to wheedle with a dodgy hotel man and arrange to sleep in a 2-bed room even though we are 3 people, thus getting a bathroom in our room for the same price as a dorm. The bathroom was ok, but stank of musty towels and other indescribable odours! Oh well.

That afternoon we wandered through cotton and corn fields enjoying the sunshine. We met a lovely Uighur family picking apples, so stopped to chat with them. They gave us handfuls of apples to take with us, and we spoke with them as best we could in broken Chinese, Uighur and hand movements! Later we bought a watermelon and the boys shared many of their pieces with a local donkey.

Road lined with trees in Ruoqiang.

That night was a terrible one... I don't know what I'd eaten that was so bad but I was as sick as a dog. I won't go into detail but it basically included lots of diarrhea and throwing up! Lovely. So when 6am came around and it was time for the guys to get up I was grateful to at least have someone to talk to. By this time I was feeling marginally better, but not really looking forward to the day of driving again.

We got to the bus station just before 8am, which was when we were told the bus would leave, only to discover that there was no bus, it was a 4x4, and that it only left after 10am. Great. Martin and Ally then went to find us some breakfast, only dry bread for me, and we waited around for this 4x4. At 10am we were duly seated inside with our new friend who was travelling the same way - a lovely lady from Taiwan!! Great to have that connection again, and Martin and I positively piled her with questions about the country that we miss so much.

Typical Uighur bread that we ate that morning

Waiting seemed to be the name of the game however, and we had to wait for another 2 or more hours before the car left. By this time the taxi man had managed to fill the car with 2 more people (squashed in the back with the luggage). We were getting angry from having to wait so long, and even more so because we weren't sure if the price we were paying for the ticket was the same as what the local people were paying. When we finally drove out of the bus station, we only got 100m down the road when the driver stopped again to squash even more people in! So sneaky, because this way the bus station sees none of it, and the driver gets cash straight into his own pocket! Grrrr....

Luckily, what made up for the annoying driver and his money-making schemes was the drive to Shimianquan... it was gorgeous, absolutely breath-taking mountains all around us and in the distance.

SHIMIANQUAN

As we drove into Shimianquan, all we saw was dust. Dust in the air, dust on the groud... we'd driven into dust-ville. We figured it was some kind of mine, and it was only a few days later when we looked it up on the internet that we realised it was an asbestos mine. Scary stuff, I can't bear to imagine what those people's lungs look like!

Asbestos mining

Our Taiwanese friend helped us find the cheapest bed in town - only Y10. For this price we got a lumpy bed (Martin's was damp!), a tap in the corridor outside where we could brush our teeth, and NO toilet. I shall repeat that, no toilet. We simply were told to find a spot outside and avoid the crazy dog chained up near the back door. Pleasant.

That evening we went on a mission to help Ally buy a jacket (he was wandering around in only a t-shirt while Martin and I were dressed in about 4 layers!) and after that had some supper. We ate a scrummy meal of aubergines and mutton, and played with the restaurant owner's little puppy.

The next morning was sooo cold! We had no time for breakfast, but had to rush to clamber into a local bus with loads of other people making the 1 hour journey to Huatugou.

The road our bus took to Huatugou

HUATUGOU

We arrived in this little town merely to buy a sleeper bus ticket to Golmud, and a few more journey snacks. We managed to find an internet cafe there and some food (lovely dumplings) and that was about it. Our sleeper bus left at 3pm, and we were told we'd arrive in Golmud at about 6am the next day.

The bus was ok, slightly different to other sleeper buses we've been on as it had a 5 bed area at the back where everyone gets to squash together like sardines. And it was just our lucky day... we were in the back there, along with our Taiwanese friend, and Smelly Man. Poor Martin was in the middle, sandwiched between Smelly Man and me, while Ally and the Taiwanese lady were lucky enough to be on either edge beside the windows. Windows are a miracle in these buses as the men usually chain smoke the entire time and its the only way to get any breathable air.

Sleeper bus beds

This journey was, in a nutshell, a nightmare. The men really did chain smoke almost the entire way - filling the whole bus with their cancerous air. The crazy bus driver obviously had strange ideas about how often humans need to pee... he even refused to stop when Ally begged him!! Only when Ally asked a second time and wouldn't give up did he pull the bus over... and then every single passenger got out with sighs of relief!!!

That night I don't think any of us slept very much, the road was extreemly bumpy and there were many unpleasant smells wafting around. I kept needing the toilet and of course, had to wait hours before I could relieve myself. When we finally arrived in Golmud at about 4:30am, we were all just ready for a bed and sleep. Our Taiwanese friend (what a star!) helped us find a cheap hotel and we all crashed.

GOLMUD

City street

We only stayed in Golmud for one day, but managed to pack so much into that day!! It was our mission to get a train ticket on the new Qinghai-Tibet railway line, with or without a permit. Martin and I were looking for the cheapest possible way in to Tibet basically. The "legal" route is to pay a ridiculous price for a tour (about Y1700) and go from Golmud to Lhasa by bus. You can also bribe the bus drivers to take you illegally, and that would cost about Y800. We'd read on an official website that the actual permit for the train from Golmud was only Y400, so decided to try and find that if we could, because if we added the price of the permit to the price of the train ticket (Y143) it would still work out cheaper - plus we'd get to go and the super new cool train over elevations of 5000m!!! We spent the day taking a bus here, a taxi there, all around town to various travel agencies and permit issuing offices. It was tedious.

We were eventually told that there was no possible way we could get this permit without paying for a tour - which we were adamant not to do. Instead, we decided to ask our Taiwanese friend to buy the train ticket for us (she could buy it safely because she looks Chinese and its only foreigners who need a permit before buying a ticket). That evening she came back with a massive grin on her face - we all had tickets to Lhasa for the next day!!! A miracle!

That night we didn't sleep much, mostly out of excitement and anticipation I think (we were nervous we'd get asked for our permit once on the train), but it was still difficult to get out of bed in the morning... we've had over a week of just sleeping and taking buses - exhausting!!

When we arrived at the train station, we kept our heads down and didn't talk much - trying to attract as little attention as possible. We got through the first ticket check... then the second... then the third. Nobody even blinked an eye! So we officially got into Tibet for Y143 each (about Y1557 less than we thought we'd have to pay!)

The new Qinghai-Tibet Train

The train was awesome, I think the one we were on was coming from Xi'an, but its the Golmud-to-Lhasa section that offers the most breath-taking scenery apparently. We had some serious record-breakers along the way: the world's highest passenger railroad (at Tanggula Pass - elevation: 5072m) and the world's highest railroad tunnel (Fenghuoshan - elevation: 4905m). Over 80% of the journey is at altitudes above 3900m, and half the track was laid atop permafrost.

Inside the train was cool, we only paid for hard seats as the 14hour journey is during the day, but we had a sneaky peak at the sleeper carriages and they were stunning. Every seat and bed has oxygen available to use... we asked for it in the middle of the day because we stopped for over an hour at about 4500m high to let other trains pass, and they brought us a clear plastic tube (like those you see in hospitals) which you put in your nose and they connect to an oxygen port underneath the seat. Nice.

So now we're in Lhasa, trying to acclimatise to the altitude here (3700m) by drinking loads of water and just resting. I need to catch up so much sleep after our marathon journey getting here!!

Kashgar to Tashkurgan and back again.

2006-10-04T20:29:00.000+08:00

Today we arrived back in Kashgar after a wonderful 3 days of no showers, no clean clothes but the most beautiful scenery I think I've ever seen.

We'd arrived in Kashgar last Saturday, perfect timing to go and see the famous Sunday Market (where about 50,000 people come to buy and sell their goods) the next day. This we did, and were amazed!! It's a huge market stretching though various buildings and streets and full of local Uighurs selling everything from animals to car parts to silk scarves. We spent about 5 hours there just wandering around and taking photos.

Nuts and spices...

Colourful material is sold all over the market.

After our people-watching-filled day we headed to the 'Pakistani Restaurant', which is near our hotel, for a delicious dinner of curry, yoghurt, chapaties and sweet tea. Yum.

On Monday morning we were off to the bus station to take the bus along the Karakorum Highway to Tashkurgan. Tashkurgan is the last town on the Chinese side of the border with Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan. We didn't make it all the way to the border but the drive to Tashkurgan was gorgeous. It took about 6 hours, driving through stunning mountains that varied from sandy hills, to red/orangy rocks to snow-capped peaks. The road is at an elevation of about 3600m, but we managed to avoid getting altitude sickness along the way. The tallest mountain we passed is called Mount Muztagata ("Father of Ice Mountains") at about 7500m.

The village of Tashkurgan is full of mainly Kygyz and Tajik people. They look quite different from the Uighurs we've been seeing lately, and the women all walk around with caps on their heads covered with bright red/pink veils. We spent a few agonising hours trying to find a place to sleep... we managed to come here just as China is having a public holiday so all the hotel were filled, or just not letting us stay there. Eventually, after some haggling and rudeness, we found a bed to sleep in. Yes, just the one single bed. Our tiny room had no door (just a piece of wood that you could barely pull across the entrance), no light and no mattress on the bed (just a sheet underneath and a duvet to cover us). Horray for budget hotels!!

Tajik woman

That afternoon we spent wandering the village and chatting to our new friend, Mariavittoria (I think that's how you'd spell it). She is an Italian woman in her fifties who is now retired and spends about 4 months every year travelling various parts of the world. She's great, has lots of stories to tell and lots of advice as she's travelled all around Asia many times. We also visited the 'Stone City', which is a large, mud-brick fort first built around AD520ish, and from which you can see the yurt-dotted grasslands and mountains beyond. We ate dinner that evening at a local Uighur restaurant. Well, we think it was Uighur as they sold mainly 'laghman' - hand-made pulled noodles with onions, peppers, and meat etc. We ate laghman, some muttom kebabs and the most delicious lamb dumplings in a vinegary sauce!! Mmmmm...

A street in Tashkurgan

That night will not be remembered as one where we slept well... neither of us could move, and the bed was so hard and uncomfortable that we just lay there all night pretending to sleep. Luckily this meant that getting up in the morning to catch the early bus to Karakul Lake was not such a problem. We met Mariavittoria there, and all three of us squabbled with the locals for the best seats on the bus! The drive to Karakul Lake took about 2.5 hours, and I spent most of that time with my face pressed against the window enjoying the views.

Once at the lake, we avoided the 50Y entrance fee, fake concrete yurts and the hotel, and instead walked an extra 1km to a place where the fence stopped. We walked into the lake area and found a lovely Kyrgyz woman who offered us her yurt for the night. Perfect! We stayed the night for Y20 each, and paid an extra Y10 for dinner. Her yurt was lovely, inside was neat and everything had its own place. The floor was covered in lots of colourful carpets that the women make (I wish I could buy one to bring home!) and other than that it housed a small woodstove and the space to sleep.

Typical Kyrgyz yurt

As we'd arrived quite early in the day (about 11am Beijing time, which means about 9am Xinjiang province time) we had the whole day to spend taking in the gorgeous scenery. Martin went for a walk around the lake, while I spent most of the day just gazing and enjoying God's amazing creation. I think this place has to be one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. It was so quiet too... all you could hear were the sounds of the grazing animals and the occasional bird.

Mount Muztagata

When the sun started to set, the cold really started to creep into every part of our bodies. I just sat inside the yurt trying to stop the feelings of nausea that kept washing over me... I guess it was the altitude but I was cross because both Martin and Mariavittoria were fine. I thought that some good warm food inside me would help so I just clung on till supper was made. It was so interesting to watch the woman make supper, she first steamed a huge pot of rice, and then set about getting the veggies ready. She chopped everything up, using a small wooden board on the floor, and then brought out a big wok which she put over the fire. This she filled with a shockingly large amount of oil (our Italian friend was disturbed and kept saying "oh no is too much"), a little water, and some spices. When it was hot enough she dumped the meat and vegetables inside and stirred them vigorously. It was quite delicious and I felt much better afterwards!

After dinner, she and her husband announced (her husband spoke a little English) that they were off to the village and would be back around 8:30pm. Once they'd left however, we three felt we just couldn't stay awake any longer, so we hauled out some blankets and made our bed. I was determined not to get cold in the night so made Martin get 3 thick blankets to cover us... this, it turned out, was a mistake on my part because the blankets were so thick and heavy that it was difficult to move under them and I woke many times in the night feeling too hot!! Crazy. It did get very cold in the night however, and when I woke up needing the loo in the morning it was painful getting out from under the blankets and having to face the outdoors!!

The next morning, we declined their offer of breakfast as we felt we didn't have enough time... we were going to wait on the side of the road for the bus to Kashgar, hoping that there would be space for us. After waiting a few minutes, a car pulled up and offered us a lift for Y50, which Martin and I thought was too much, but our Italian friend happily got in. I think she was desperate to get back to her hotel and shower :)

We waited another minute or two, and then suddenly the bus was upon us!! We didn't manage to get on it however as it was full of people... grrrr. Martin was delighted as this now gave us an opportunity to hitch-hike. I think he was hoping for a ride in a cool big truck. We started walking down the road, and I wasn't complaining because the air was so fresh and the scenery awe-inspiring! After about an hour of walking, we were picked up by an Uighur man in a twincab bakkie thing, who took us all the way back to Kashgar for only Y30 each (cheaper than the bus!).

Now we've had a shower in our hotel, The Seman Hotel, and are looking forward to supper having eaten nothing all day because we were stuck on the road.

The lobby area (which makes it look far more beautiful than it really is!)

Our hotel from the outside

Kanas Lake Tour

2006-10-01T18:28:00.000+08:00

So after two very uninspiring days in Urumuqi, where we did nothing but eat food from the big supermarket Carrefour, Martin and I left on a four day tour to Kanas Lake. We did not want to take a tour at all, but after some swift calculations on my little cell phone, we realised that it would be soooo much cheaper that way. Of course we lose our freedom, but we help our pockets... and that is our ultimate aim these days!

On Saturday morning, we woke up at 6:30am (oh the pain!!) and managed to just about organise ourselves to be at the rendevous point (somewhere in the middle of the city) at the correct time. 7:30am. We expected to see lots of other tourists there, eagerly awaiting the bus. But this was not to be, and we spent almost another hour waiting for the bus to arrive, as well as the other passengers. But eventually we were all on the bus and ready to go... 10 hours driving through the desert ahead of us.

The day in the bus didn't turn out to be so bad, mostly because I'd recently acquired a new book to read ("The Bonesetter's Daughter" by Amy Tang. Wonderful book, would recommend it!!). After one long-ish stop in the desert to see some famous land forms (in "The Ghost Town of China" so named because apparantly when the wind blows through these rock formations, it sounds creeeeepy!!), a few other toilet breaks, and a finished book, we arrived in Burquin.

I don't really have much to say about Burquin, all I really remember is the little hotel we stayed in and the street it was on. We spent an hour or so wandering along the street before retiring to our room to sleep. We woke up too early the next morning and were ready about half an hour before everyone else... very annoying as it was cold and my body would have enjoyed an extra 30 minutes in my warm bed :) I mostly blame my poor Chinese, our tour guide is constantly rattling off useful information, but I catch hardly any of it!

That morning, we took another 3 hours to reach Kanas Lake. The drive was gorgeous, through mountains, ravines, forests etc... stunning. When we got there, it was all far too touristy for our liking - loads of huge tour buses parked in the parking lot, thousands of Chinese tourists hanging around screaming at each other and a queue for the toilets that was unbelievable. The toilets themselves were also rather a treat. The stench was unbearable and as most of them didn't have doors you just had to go with about 20 other woman staring at you while you did your thing. I was such a novelty that some of the women actually bent down to get a closer look (at what I don't want to even think about... I just got out of there as fast as I could!!).

After being grouped together by our tour guide we were rushed through the gate, and onto another bus. The only vehicles allowed in the lake area are the specially assigned buses, which you can just get on and off whereever you want. We spent the whole day there, just soaking in the gorgeous views. It was stunning!! Definately one of my favourite places in our travels so far. Even though I hated seeing all the tourists around, we were still able to creep away from them in places and just enjoy the scenery.

Kanas Lake in winter.

Cresent Moon area.

That afternoon we also hiked up one of the mountains next to the lake, and the view from the top was gorgeous! We could see all the way to Friendship Peak, a mountain on the Russian border! While the rest of our tour took a bus back down the mountain to save time, Martin and I caused trouble by saying we wanted to hike all the way down again. After getting the telephone number of a lovely man (his name is Levy, and he lives in Chengdu with his wife and daughter) who spoke excellent English, our guide was satisfied that we'd be ok, and we were allowed to do the trip by ourselves. We spent a lovely hour and a half walking down the moutain, enjoying the views of the snow capped mountains all around us.

When we reached the bottom we took one of the lake buses back to the entrance in time to meet the rest of our tour. Or so we thought! By now it was about 7:40pm and we were supposed to have been there at 7:30pm. After discovering that they hadn't waited for us, we phoned Levy to find out what we should do. Thank goodness we had my phone :) We were told to walk for about another 30 minutes down the hill, and soon we'd find the complex of hotels that all the tourists were kept in. Martin managed to hitch a lift with a nice man in a 4x4, horray for my tired feet!

Once we reached all the hotels it wasn't hard to spot some members of our group, so we followed them to find out where we'd be sleeping. Levy was wonderful - he helped us get our bags out of the bus, bought us some muttom kebabs for supper and showed us where we'd sleep... we had to separate because they were all dorm rooms and of course, boys and girls can't share a room!! ha ha ha. I was in a room with 2 other women, both of whose respective other halves were in Martin's room with him.

That night I almost froze!! I was so cold I hardly slept at all, even though I was wearing my gorgeous long-johns, about 3 tops and was under a thick duvet. When Martin came to make sure I was awake, he found a very grumpy cold girlfriend.

That morning we drove again to Kanas Lake, to watch the sunrise. Sadly, the weather was terrible and it was bitterly cold, so the sunrise was not great. It was really cloudy and misty so we couldn't see much and after a while it started raining so everyone decided that we wouldn't wait it out. We left the Kanas Lake area and headed in our tour bus to Hemu. This part of the tour was not in our original plan, we were told nothing about an extra trip to a little village called Hemu, next to Hemu river. Martin and I had caused another stir the night before because we refused to pay extra for this trip. All the other Chinese tourists had coughed up the money, but it was really expensive for something we weren't told about from the beginning. Luckily Levy helped us talk to the tour guide and miraculously we were told that we could come for no extra charge. Horray!!

The trip to Hemu took a few hours, more driving through the twisty turny mountain roads. But I wasn't complaining, it's autumn now so the trees were the most gorgeous shades of green, yellow, orange and red - absolutely stunning. When we arrived in Hemu we were really glad we hadn't paid anything extra. It was stunning, but still touristy. There were lots and lots of wooden houses being built everywhere (you can imagine how much worse the tourism will be in a few years time) and we were often hassled by boys on horses trying to get us to pay for a ride. We had a nice time regardless, took a walk up the side of a mountain with Levy, got some gorgeous photos and enjoyed the fresh air!

Hemu river.

After spending the afternoon walking around, we were back on the bus headed for Burquin again. Another uneventful evening, just catching up with sleep and eating instant noodels.

The next day, we were back on the bus returning to Urumuqi. Nice drive back, Martin and I nabbed the back seat so we stretched out and slept a lot of the way. Lots of toilet stops along the way, including one of the most disgusting ones we've seen so far.... couldn't describe it. You'll have to see a picture one day :)

When we got back to the city the fun didn't stop... Levy had invited us to dinner that night. He gave us an hour to get back to our youth hostel, shower and change and meet him at the restaurant he'd picked out. No problem we thought. But getting the local bus back to our youth hostel proved to be harder than we thought - so annoying, and we eventually had to take a taxi (how we hate them!! money stealers!!). Once at the youth hostel, we still had to check in and pay for a night's accomodation, and then ask them to unlock the shower so we could get in. This all took rather longer than an hour and when we eventually sat down at the table with Levy (and our tour guide) we were really late. Ooops.

We had the most delicious dinner with the two of them - lamb kebabs, rice and more lamb, and sweet yoghurt for pudding (which we ate first because it arrived and we were hungry!!). We also found out that our tour guide had paid our entrance fee to Hemu (Y120, about 8 pounds... doesn't sound like much but not to be sniffed at considering the small amount she's probably earning!). Such a sweet and lovely lady - we couldn't believe it and felt really bad about insisting on not paying for something we weren't told about. Ooops!

So now were just waiting till tomorrow when we leave on our 24 hour bus journey to Kashgar. I'm really looking forward to going to the markets there (perhaps buying myself a silk treat!) and getting to the Pakistan border. Horray :)

Gansu Province Silk Road: Zhangye, Jiayuguan, Dunhuang.

2006-09-24T14:59:00.000+08:00

MOUNTAINS:

While in Zhangye, Gansu province, we took a day trip to Mati Temple in the mountains. We were told before we left to take lots of warm clothes as it is "no hot, too cold" there. As we don't really have any warm clothes, we had to make do. Martin wore 2-shirts, a short sleeved shirt, a long sleeved shirt and his new fleece that we'd managed to buy the day before. I wore my pajama top, my t-shirt and my light long-sleeved jumper - yes, I know, not so much of the warm stuff! But I did take along my sarong thinking I could use it as a scarf or something.

We took a minibus there, which was full of local people just trying to get out into the lands nearby. Once we were 9km out, we were unceremoniously dropped out of the bus and left on the side of the road to find a taxi. We don't like taxis, but eventually had to succum to taking one with 2 other Chinese people. We bargained fiercely but the taxi man wouldn't budge so we decided to be just as stubborn and headed off down the road without looking back... after a few minutes, the taxi came crawling along side us and said that our price was ok! Yeah, one up to the foreigners!

Once we were there, it wasn't so much the temple that amazed us, but rather the surrounding Qilian Mountain range. The mountains were stunning, and we spent most of our time getting neckache from straining to look up at them. The temple looked wonderful but we were disappointed because it was all locked up and there was no way to get inside. The only thing we could do was stand outside and get frustrated.

The temple built into the side of the mountain.

While we were there we went for a walk in the valley trying to find the waterfall. We followed a little stream all the way to the top, where it ended in a crude man-made dam thing, not a waterfall. Martin then had a very 'bright idea' and said we should climb up the side of the hill (through dense vegetation I must add!) and from there we'd be able to see better. This we did, getting thoroughly scratched and ripped apart by thorn trees and the like. When we got to the 'top' we discovered that it wasn't actually the top, and we had more scrambling to do. The problem was it was really cold and I was getting grumpy. It was so cold in fact, that it had started snowing!! Crazy. We eventually thought better of Martin's little short cut and made our way back down the hill again, thinking that we didn't really have the correct gear for a snow-filled adventure up the mountainside!!

The further we got down the valley the colder we felt, and then it started raining! We had to run all the way back down and hide in a yurt until it stopped. We were soaked, cold, hungry and tired. Luckily for us, the yurt was full of a gang of Chinese people just finishing their lunch, which they offered to us. Horray for hot soup and tea. I misheard the man when he first presented us with a big plate of meat, thinking he had said "gourou" (meaning DOG meat)... I timidly tried a tiny bite (after much persuasion from Martin) only to later discover, thankfully, that it was actually just mutton.

Once the rain stopped we went outside and were met with a gorgeous sight, the mountains behind us were covered in snow. The sun came out and was shining off them, it was seriously beautiful.

When it came to about 4pm we realised we'd better be off catching the taxi back to the non-descript bus stop. This we did, and after about 30 minutes of waiting in the lovely sunshine (drying all our clothes and warming us up good and proper!), along came the bus. OH MY!! This was my first real 'how can you possibly fit more people in this bus' moment! We were squished in to a minivan (supposed to carry a max of 12 people) that already had about 22 people in it (plus people's luggage and machines on the roof). All along that road we kept picking more and more people up until the bus was literally bursting... I counted 35 people!!!!! What madness. When we eventually reached Zhangye, I was so grateful to get off and breathe fresh air again!!

GLACIERS:

When we were in Jiayuguan (north of Zhangye and further up the silk road) we took what was supposed to be a 'day trip' to the July 1st Glacier. According to our ever-so-helpful guide book, this glacier is gorgeous to behold and therefore a must-see if one is staying in the area for a while. We decided that we'd love to see it, but wanted to go independantly and not fork out hundreds of yuan for a taxi ride there and back.

We discovered to our delight that there was a train line running almost to the glacier, which took a winding three hours through the mountains. I have lots of time for mountains so we duly got on this train at 8:10am. The ride was lovely, the mountains beautiful, and the people friendly and interested in us (and thought it was hilarious that I made a guy go and smoke outside our carriage... I don't think they expect attitude from a woman!!).

When we arrived at the last stop on the line, in a small mining town called Jingtieshan, we thought finding a taxi or a ride to the glacier (a further 20km or something like that) would be easy. Think again!!! We found a few taxi-like cars that were driving by, but they clearly saw an opportunity and asked us for way too much money. So we refused.

This meant that we spent the day sitting around on the dusty roadside watching trucks go by and sometimes chatting to other miners while they too waited for lifts. It was actually a gorgeous day, the wind was bitterly cold but the sun was out and shining nicely to keep us warm. We weren't too worried as we'd checked at the train station and the last train back to Jiayuguan was at 5:30pm.

Our view while waiting...

The real kick-in-the-pants of the day arrived later at about 5pm. We'd wandered over to the train station, expecting many people there for the last train. There was not a single person in sight... strange. Eventually a lady came out and shouted at us to get away, she said there was no train back to Jiayuguan until the next day so would we please go to the nearest town and stay the night in a hotel there. What??? I was so mad, couldn't believe that we'd been told only a few hours before that there was another train going. Martin eventually calmed me down and we realised that this would actually be a cool adventure. Annoying, as we'd already paid for our nice hotel back in the town, but an adventure none the less.

After a little wait, we were picked up by a huge bus taking the mining boys back to the nearest village. The bus driver was a gem, and he said he would help us find the "hotel". The little village was lovely, built mainly to house and keep the miners, with a little river that ran along the bottom of the valley too. We found a nice room to stay in (cheap too!) and had supper with our bus driver friend in the restaurant next door. Delicious beef and noodles, yum.

The next day we wandered by the river, enjoying the sunshine (phew-y was it cold at night!!) and then made our way back with the same bus to the train station. Our bus driver man wasn't driving the bus this time, he was all spruced up looking good as he was going home to his wife for 4 days. He sat with us on the bus and we chatted in broken Chinese for the full 3 hour journey. What a great guy!! We found out that he works for 10 days at the mines, then is allowed 4 days to go home, then back on for 10 days etc. Not such a bad life considering some we've seen here in China. We took a photo of him and promised to send him a copy.

Back in Jiayuguan we had a funny time trying to explain our little adventure to the hotel ladies, and pondered over what the beautiful glacier might have looked like :)

CAVES AND SANDDUNES:

From Jiayuguan, we headed to Dunhuang, home of the famous Magao Caves. These caves are thousands of years old and absolutely stunning. Similar to the Yungang Grottoes we saw in Datong and considered one of the most important groups of Buddhist caves in the world.

The first day we were there we visited these caves and found them just stunning. The strict Chinese rules apply though, and you can't just wander around on your own - you must be in a tour group and are only allowed to see about 10 caves. These 10 they rotate every now and again to better preserve them.

The day afterwards we went on a rather wild tour of places outside of Dunhuang. We'd met a nice Chinese lady who was looking for other people to share a taxi for the day. We hadn't planned on visiting these places but they sounded cool and it was a good price. We left at 7am and spend a good 10 hours in the car, driving through the desert on looooong straight roads.

Our first stop was the Yadan Landforms, 200km northwest of Dunhuang. They were gorgeous, formed from wind and water erosion since the time when dinosaurs roamed the lands! We spent over and hour there, enjoying the silence of the desert and the fact that the 7 of us (we joined with 4 others from another taxi doing the same thing) were the only ones there! Lovely.

After that we drove to many other places, taking lots of pictures and getting thoroughly hot and sweaty in the sun.

When we arrived back in Dunhuang that evening, we met up with our Israeli friend who was staying in the same dorm as us, and went for dinner. We had planned on cycling to the sand dunes that evening but were far too hungry and tired, so we put it off another day.

So yes, the sanddunes, we did eventually make it to them... on Sept 19th. We rented rickety old bikes for Y1 an hour and rode the 6km out to the dunes. When we arrived we did what 'everyone does' and ignored the big entrance way charging Y80. We cycled around to the right, intending to cycle until the fence around the dunes stops. We'd been told by our guide book, various travel advice papers in cafe's and by people we'd met in the town that most people do this and manage to climb the dunes free from the hoardes that surround the entrance area.

When we reached a spot in the trees where we thought we could hide our bikes convincingly we stopped. Martin bravely broke his way through brambles and bushes to find a good bike-hiding area and we left them there. We walked the rest of the way, slipping through the sand along the fence. After a while we found the place where the fence stops and made our way toward it. But then... I heard a sound.... I looked up and there was a Chinese man running down the sanddune toward us yelling. Oh dear.
He reached us and started saying that we couldn't climb the dunes here and we had to go all the way back and pay the fee like everyone else, blah blah blah. Martin did a great job of pretending to not understand a word of Chinese and after some time we grinned pleasantly and carried on. He followed us for a while, but then gave up thinking we were just going to fetch our bikes.

Once he'd turned his back on us, we were off... we ran around the bottom of the sanddune to an area where the trees would cover us for a while and we started to climb up (bloody hard work!!). I was constantly looking over my shoulder in case the guard was following us, not being a fan of confrontation with officials. We took ages climbing the dune, it was so huge and it was really hard to walk in the soft sand. We reached the top (ish) just as the sun was setting and the views were gorgeous.

Once the sun had set, the temperature got cold pretty quickly and it was really windy at the top so we decided to head back town. As we turned around and faced the direction we'd come in, we suddenly saw our guard and he'd found a buddy. Yikes!! We didn't want to be fined so we ran down the dune as fast as we could. I found it hilarious as Martin was screaming at me to keep up and running as if a pack of wild dogs were behind him. It was so much more fun running down the dune than climbing up it, we were at the bottom in about 3 minutes!

From the bottom, we rushed to get under the cover of the trees... but after about 20 minutes of watching and waiting in the dark, we realised those guys had probably just gone home not bothered with 2 naughty foreigners... so we walked safely back to our bikes. Finding our bikes was a whole other story, but with the help of my cell phone torch we eventually did. From there, we cycled back to Dunhuang and had a lovely cold shower to get rid of the sand :)

Ode to Katie...

2006-09-20T15:45:00.000+08:00

Today I came to the internet cafe with the intention of writing about all the things we've been doing lately. This I did not do. Instead, I spent my time just looking at Katie's blog and her photos and missing her totally. So my friend, I stole this picture and decided it needed to be put on my blog. I love you and miss you :)

(Sorry can't get picture to work... will try again when I have time)

P.S. Yes, yes, yes... come to England!!

From Lanzhou to Zhangye...

2006-09-08T14:28:00.000+08:00

Martin and I spent the last few days travelling from Xi'an to Zhangye. We couldn't get a train ticket directly here, so had to stop off in Lanzhou first. We took the overnight train from Xi'an, booked on hard-seats. We were hoping to upgrade to sleepers once we were on the train but that proved to be impossible. So instead of sleeping, we spent a nightmare 10 hours sitting upright on seats, squashed between everyone and his massive bag of luggage, and listening to the baby opposite my seat cry (a swift kick back to reality after the Hyatt!!).

Once in Lanzhou, we were hoping to get a train/bus ticket straight out of there. We got off the train at about 7:30am and made our way to the ticket office. That's where things started to unravel. We both were trying to get over bouts of diarrhea that seemably crept up out of nowhere and attacked during the night, and didn't have the energy to face the crowds in the queues for tickets. I had a particularly terrible time trying to use the public bathrooms in the train station... I had to wait for over an hour in the queue, being pushed and shoved (and slapped!!) by migrant women, enduring the smell seeping from the toilets and feeling very much the "foreigner". Not fun.

After a few hours, we felt ready to hoist on our backpacks and take the bus to the long-distance bus station. First stop was the South Bus Station, where we discovered that there were actually no tickets to be bought. The only ones available were on a sleeper bus going to Jiayuguan and cost Y200 each. To Zhangye it should only be Y100 each so we refused to pay that price to go half the distance! After that we tried the East bus station, which wasn't much help either. We then went to a small bus station with no name that also couldn't help. This all took over 5 hours and we had to carry all our bags around the whole time! Eventually we ended up back at the train station and Martin managed to get us tickets for the next day. Horray! By this time we were so exhausted and hungry we could barely stand, so we quickly found a cheap hotel and crawled into bed. We slept the rest of the day away, woke for some supper in the evening and were asleep again soon after that.

The next day we took the train for another 10hours-ish to Zhangye. It was quite a nice journey compared to the last one as we had sleepers and spent the day sleeping and reading (plus it had air-con!). Once we arrived in Zhangye, we took a local bus to the centre of town and found a really cheap hotel (Y40 a night for a double room).

Anciently named Ganzhou, Zhangye was a famous commercial port on the Silk Road and one of the biggest international trade markets in the country. The reason we came here was to start our journey along the silk road and to see China's largest reclining Buddha. We've spent a few days here now and I still haven't seen the Buddha. Martin managed to sneak in to the temple the other day for free (admission is ridiculously high for what there is to see - Y41) and was sorely disappointed... the Buddha was covered in scaffolding, as was a lot of the temple's outer buildings. I don't think I'll bother.

Apart from that, we've just been enjoying the 'localness' of the place. The people here are so friendly and always curious about us. One day we spent hours wandering the streets just taking it all in. We wandered through pedestrian streets, ate freshly made yoghurt and steamed buns and delighted the locals.

Martin has been a bit sick lately, which we've blamed on the sudden change in temperature... seriously the weather has become a lot colder around here. I think it might just be a spell, but still - I have to wear my one cardigan everyday and at night I snuggle under my thick duvet to keep warm. Strange. But we're looking into buying some winter clothes around here as they are super cheap and it will be good preparation for the Pakistani/Tibet areas we're going to.

The pagoda overlooking the square where we sit at night and watch the water fountain.

The giant buddha.

(Thanks to TravelChinaGuide for the photos!)

The Hyatt Regency, Xi'an.

2006-09-05T13:33:00.000+08:00

Thanks to our wonderful parents, Martin and I had the most marvelous time in our 'birthday hotel'. We arrived to check in at 12 on Friday and didn't leave the place until 9pm the next day! You could say we made the most of it :)

We opted for a Regency Club room, which means that we paid a set price and got all the Club bonuses included in that. Regency Club guests have their own lounge, unlimited soft drinks (the most delicious English breakfast tea ever!), complimentary cocktails and snacks in the evening from 5:30-8pm and complimentary breakfast in the morning. Lovely. We also added to that a hot breakfast downstairs in the main cafe (more feasting options!!).

The Room:

Our room was beautiful - it had a massive double bed with the softest sheets I've ever felt (quite a treat after months of hard youth hostel beds and skanky sheets in dirty cheap hotels!), 4 telephones (Martin's favourite being the one by the loo!), a huge flat screen tv, minibar, walk in cupboard, desk area to receive faxes, and a huge bathroom with both a shower and a big bath! My personal favourite was the complimentary conditioner... how my hair has missed it!! Of the time I spent in our room, most of it I just wandered around in my soft white robe and slippers and telephoned downstairs for stuff. Hee hee!

The Lounge:

The Regency Club lounge was lovely, soft music playing, big comfy couches and chairs to sit on and many waitresses to attend to your every need. Martin and I basked in the attention and enjoyed copious cups of tea and biscuits while reading English newspapers and magazines. In the evening we arrived for cocktails and snacks, only to discover that with the amount of food available, we could happily gorge our way through it and skip dinner :) We ate salad, chicken wings, cheese, crackers, bread, fruit, pudding and lots more... and accompanying all that was a lovely selection of wines and spirits, which we thoroughly enjoyed (we've been drinking only cheap beer since we arrived!!).

The Spa:

Complimentary to all guests at the Hyatt is a lovely gym, spa and sauna. We spent a good while in there enjoying the jacuzzi and getting pruney fingers and toes! We even went in the next day after being told that we didn't need to check out until 2pm.

The Breakfast:

When I woke up on Saturday morning, I didn't want to get out of bed... I was warm, cozy and sleepy. But after a nudge from Martin and a quick reminder about the kind of breakfast we might be expecting, I leapt up and was downstairs in 5 minutes. It was definately worth getting out of bed for! There was everything one could want in a breakfast... yoghurt, fruit, cereals, breads, cheeses, jams, honey, danish pastries, Chinese dumplings, bacon, eggs (of ANY kind), mushrooms, sausages, tomatoes, french toast etc etc... (I would continue but my mouth is watering and I don't want to drool on the keyboard!).

So basically, we spent more than 24 hours in pure luxury. I can't believe that some people actually have the money to spend on these kinds of hotels regularly. It was amazing, but not the way I want to travel through Asia.

On Saturday our train was only leaving at 10:20pm so after checking out, we spent the rest of the day in the lobby. We ordered a pot of tea and sat reading books for hours. Wonderfully relaxing. Before we left, we also treated ourselves to some fish and chips and onion rings. Lip-smackingly delish!

Thanks again wonderful Mum, Dad, Jan and Frank xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Pictures from around China...

2006-09-04T21:17:00.000+08:00

HORRAY!!

Here are some pictures of us from various parts of China that we finally managed to get onto cd and then on Martin's flickr account... enjoy :)

Our first stop: Hong Kong. This is the sunset over the harbour, which we watched after a fun day in the museums.

Tian'annem Square, Beijing... can you see old Mao Zedong in the background??

The Great Wall of China!! Very exciting, if rather rainy.

Breath-taking Changbai Mountain, the volcanic crater lake that we ooohed and aaahed at for hours.

The famous mullet man of Dandong, giving the singing a break while he downs more beer.

Inside the Imperial Summer Villa, Chengde, we hiked up one of the mountains and watched the sunset.

The incredible Yungang Grottoes about one hours drive out of Datong.

Riding horses in Huitenxile, Inner Mongolia. Lovely blue skies :)

Our Zhengzhou family (minus mum who was working!) beside an ancient tree in the Renmin Park.

Martin practices his very own style of kung-fu in the Pagoda Forest, Shaolin.

My birthday!! We wandered the Muslim streets in Xi'an and ate wierd steamed rice things with gloopy black paste and peanut shavings.

Xi'an Adventures...

2006-08-31T16:10:00.000+08:00

Hello friends!

Well, Martin and I have been in Xi'an for almost 2 weeks now (aaargh!) and the only sightseeing we've done was accomplished in 2 days! The reason we're still here is that we've been struggling to get a train ticket out of here... we refused to pay the Y40 surcharge the hostel asks so instead had to spend hours in fat queues (on different days), putting up with the stinky stale smokey air and fighting with locals for precious tickets. We eventually got a ticket - but not to the place we want!! So now we're off on Saturday to Lanzhou, the most polluted city in the world - quite a tourist pull hey?? When we arrive there, there are no plans for sightseeing, we're just going to hang in the train station until we can get tickets for an onward journey!

So, about Xi'an. We've actually been having a lovely time in this city. It's smaller and cleaner than others we've been to, and the youth hostel we're in is a nice place just to read books and relax. The area we're in is unfortunately a bit touristy, but by walking a little way out we've found sidestreets and alleys that ask us the local price for food and other things. If we were to eat in the restaurants around our youth hostel we'd be paying through the nose!! Too many tourists who come with too much money :)

The view from our hostel: (The Bell Tower)

The first few days we were here were rather manic, we met 3 Chinese guys (Gavin, Ben and Jiang) who were sharing our dorm room and got taken under their wings! They were really cool - students from Shanghai - but had a knack of spending lots and lots of money!! The first night we met them, they took us out for a really fancy meal with so much food we almost popped! Of course, in true Chinese style, they wouldn't let us pay anything. From that moment on they clearly decided we needed lots of help and company. The company was great, the help we didn't need, but it was still a fun 3 days.

Day 1:

I met the nice Chinese guys by chatting to them in our room, while Martin read his book outside. They were full of questions about foreign tourists and foreigners studying Chinese in Asia as they study marketing and advertising and wanted opinions and views on various matters. I was exhausted after hours of being plied with questions, so was quite relieved when Martin joined us and I could sit back and just listen for a while. That evening they took us out for dinner, which we ate with gusto (not having seen food like that since eating with our Zhengzhou family!).

Day 2:

We were woken at 7:30am with Jiang fully dressed and ready for the day of sightseeing. Luckily we didn't feel too bad about letting them down as Ben was still in bed, just as "lazy" as us! After a very quick shower, much to their amusement (Chinese people generally only shower/wash in the evenings), we were ready. Martin grabbed us a quick breakfast from a vendor at the bus station (sweet buns, boiled eggs and processed meat sausages), and from there we boarded the tour bus to the various sights around Xi'an.

First stop: Huaqing Hot Springs:

The Huaqing Hot Spring is famed for both its dainty spring scenery and the romantic love story of Emperor Xuanzong (685-762) and his concubine Yang Guifei in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). It is said that King You built a palace here during the Western Zhou Dynasty (11th century BC-711 BC). Additions were subsequently made by the First Emperor Qing (259 BC-210BC) and Emperor Wu during the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-24). During his reign, the Emperor Xuanzong spent dizzying amounts of his funds to build a luxurious palace, changing its name to Huaqing Hot Spring or Huaqing Palace. Over the course of 41 years, he visited the palace as many as 36 times. The palace thus has a history of 3,000 years and the hotspring a history of 6,000 years!

The hot springs were also the temporary residence of Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party during the world-famous Xian Incidence in 1936. We found this the most interesting because of Chiang Kai-shek's connection with Taiwan. If you can't remember who he is, this will help: He was a Chinese military and political figure who led the Nationalists against the rising Communist forces and was driven from the mainland to Taiwan (1949), where he served as president of Nationalist China until his death.

Second stop: Terracotta Warriors:

The Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses are the most significant archeological excavations of the 20th century. Work is ongoing at this site, which is around 1.5 kilometers east of Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum, Lintong County, Shaanxi province. Upon ascending the throne at the age of 13 (in 246 BC), Qin Shi Huang, later the first Emperor of all China, had work begun on his mausoleum. It took 11 years to finish. It is speculated that many buried treasures and sacrificial objects had accompanied the emperor in his after life. A group of peasants uncovered some pottery while digging for a well nearby the royal tomb in 1974. It caught the attention of archeologists immediately. They came to Xian in droves to study and to extend the digs. They had established beyond doubt that these artifacts were associated with the Qin Dynasty (211 --206 BC).

We thought the terracotta warriors were just amazing. I can't believe that some rich arrogant emperor just decided that he would be buried in the same style and magnificence that he was used to in life. Apparently, his tomb (which has not been excavated) was created with palaces, outhouses etc etc and he even had prisoners and place 'maids' buried alive with him.

After the exhausting day of rushing from place to place, we took the bus home. I was grateful as I felt that my brain was just too full of information and historical facts!! Again, we went out for dinner with our friends, and this time they actually let us pay for ourselves... we half-regretted it afterwards though - we could have eaten for 3 or 4 days with the total of our bill!!!

Day 3:

Today we finally convinced our friends that we were too tired to go sightseeing with them again (actually we just felt that we couldn't afford it!!), but agreed to have dinner with them and take a trip to the local supermarket.
Dinner was wonderful (so was the cost!!) and our trip to the supermarket ended in such a lovely suprise. When we got back to the youth hostel, the three boys whipped out presents for Martin and I, as well as a bottle of red wine and a birthday cake!!!
Such lovely guys. We went through to the restaurant area and proceeded to enjoy glasses of wine and vanilla sponge cake. Gavin gave me a watch-ring, and Martin got a Chinese flute instrument thing.

After our days with the Shanghai boys, we spend a few days simply reading books and catching up on emails. The western food in the youth hostel is so tempting - but we managed to only splurge on our birthdays :)

So yes, it was my birthday on Saturday August 26th. I didn't have the most spectacular of days, and managed to cry many times (feeling rather far away from home, family and friends), but wonderful Martin helped me feel better!! That evening was nice, we'd met some Dutch, French and an Australian guy earlier and we sat around chatting and having beers in the common room. Once they discovered it was my birthday they insisted that I have my own beer (I don't really like the stuff) and tried to convince me to come out with them to a club later on. I was the only girl among them all and felt that Martin would have a much better time without me (just some good old men-bonding time) so I ducked out of going and went to bed earlier (or that was the plan - instead I met a nice girl in the bathroom when I went for a shower at 2am, and we chatted for a good hour, and by the time I got into bed the noisy boys were home and I had to listen to Martin's account of the evening :)

Martin's birthday (Monday August 28th) was a bit more eventful, we spent the afternoon riding bikes along the Xi'an city wall, which was great fun. We also splurged on a wonderful fry-up breakfast and pizza in the evening.

The real treat for our birthdays is still to come however. Our wonderful parents have both given us some money to spend on a fancy hotel and evening meal. We've decided to do this in Xi'an as we were walking past the Hyatt Regency (oh yes darling!!) the other day and just couldn't resist. So this is where we'll be larney-ing it up tomorrow night:

We're so excited... its more than 16 times the price we usually spend for a night's accomodation, but we'er really looking forward to all the luxury! We get 24hrs free soft drinks, a cocktail and snack bar in the evening and breakfast in the morning. We're going to check in tomorrow morning really early and spend the whole day in the hotel!! I'm planning on waltzing around in my robe finding the swimming pool, spa, tennis court etc etc........ HORRAY!!! Thank you mum, dad, Jan and Frank - you're wonderful :)

So that's Xi'an for you. We'll be back after the visit to the hotel and the trip to pollution-ville!!!

Living with Locals in Zhengzhou!

2006-08-21T16:09:00.000+08:00

Well, after days of feeling so exhausted from being taken from here to there to everywhere, its nice to be in Xi'an going at our own pace again. In Xi'an you ask?? Yes, that's where we are. We had no chance to email during our time in Zhengzhou - we had no time to do anything really. Read on and I will explain...

Last week Friday, Martin and I were on a train from Taiyuan to Zhengzhou when we met a lovely young girl. She told us her name was Apple and she was 9 years old. Her English was so cute to hear... and really rather good. She was taken by Martin, playing games with him and showing him all her recent purchases (she and her parents had been travelling for 10 days during her holidays). Anyway, we spent the day chatting to her and enjoying her monkey antics (climbing all over the sleeper beds in the train!). When we were about 2 hours away from Zhengzhou, she suddenly asked us to come and stay with her and her family when we arrived. We didn't really know how to respond (what if her parents had no idea and we just followed them off the train... oops!) so remained vague and eventually I mentioned her parents. "Oh yes" she said and scurried off. Flip! She hadn't even checked with them yet!! But it all turned out ok, she came back (with mum and dad in tow), introduced us all and said that her father wanted to welcome us to his home. How lovely!! We were still a little sceptical but accepted their invitation (free accomodation, yeah!!)... and with that... we had new friends.

When we arrived in Zhengzhou at about 7:30 that evening we were bustled through the crowds outside the train station, onto the bus, and into their house. They lived on the top floor of a 7 storey building with no elevator!! Try walking up all those stairs with backpacks and daypacks and plastic bags full of water etc... nice and sweaty!!! Their apartment was lovely, clean and quite large for a Chinese family I think. Apple had her own bedroom, there was a lounge, a kitchen, a reading room and a little bathroom. Pretty much like something we would have rented in Taiwan I thought.

As soon as we'd set down our bags we were instructed to wash hands and faces and then we set out again to eat dinner. They took us to a lovely restaurant where we ate hand-pulled noodles, duck and all sorts of other culinary delights. Martin was immediately roped in to drinking baijou (strong clear liquor - about 45%!) with Apple's father, but I managed to opt out and sat with Apple drinking pineapple pop!! Of course after the meal, they wouldn't let us pay for any of it (typical of the Chinese when they invite people out to dine with them). And that was the course of the next few days as well... the whole time we were there they didn't let us pay for anything... we ate with them, drank with them, slept in their house... all for free. Such generous and lovely people!!

When we got back to the house we were told that we were sleeping in the parents double bed. What?? Such generosity! Mum was going to sleep with Apple on her bed and Dad was choosing the couch. We tried to protest but Apple told us very firmly that her father loves sleeping on the bed... "he always sleep there, he very like look tv!!"

On Saturday we were woken at 8am for a breakfast of fried eggs, Chinese bread (very heavy, quite dry and fried but delicious all the same) and warm milk made from powder. We weren't allowed to help clean up at all and just when we thought we'd like very much to crawl back into bed and get some more sleep we were told what was going to happen for the day. That morning we were going to see Renmin Amusement Park with Apple and her father, after that we would have lunch, then go and see Apple's English school. Ok?? Although we didn't have much choice it was nice being with people who really knew the city and all the nice places to go.

Renmin Park was fun... free entrance, but then all the rides and entertainment cost a bomb!! We had fun wandering around (staying under the lovely trees trying to be cooler) and munching icecreams. Martin and I took Apple on a ride similar to the London Eye, from which we could see all over the city. We also went to an ice-sculpture exhibition held right in the middle of the park. We walked through thick doors wondering if the room could possibly be cold enough to keep ice sculptures in the middle of China's summer heat... but the answer hit is in the face - it was freezing inside!! We had to wear thick winter coats which kept us warm on top but our poor bare feet didn't enjoy it very much. The sculptures were ok, but I thought they might be a bit more spectacular. Apple enjoyed herself though, running around and wanting to be photographed with all the sculptures :)

After the park we went to Apple's grandparents house (on her mother's side) to have lunch with the family. Her grandparents were really sweet, not a word of English but were always smiling at us and laughing when we said things. They enjoyed watching us eat with chopsticks (thank goodness we've mastered the art after so many years in Taiwan!!). Once lunch was over it was time to move on again (the Chinese never sit still!!), and we were off back to our home. From there we split into 2 parties. Martin and our adopted father were off to the train station to buy tickets for us to Xi'an, and Apple and I were headed to her English school. We had a lovely walk there, and then I was deposited outside to wait for her to finish her first hour of class. I sat in the garden and relaxed for the first time that day, but was soon disturbed by the arrival of Martin and Dad. We all sat together waiting for Apple and when she came out we met her teacher and her classmates. Such a small classroom - and so different from our experiences in Taiwan I think. The school was really small with different textbooks too (more for kindergarten than 9 year olds!).
After school we walked back to the house, and spent the evening with the family eating dinner and looking through photo albums.

On Sunday Martin and I had the day to ourselves as we were going to do the tourist sightseeing thing. Zhengzhou is a perfect place to stop if you want to see the Shaolin Monastery. The Shaolin Monastery is where Zen Buddhism began and is known as the cradle of Chinese martial arts. Hundreds of boys still study various forms of kung-fu here today.

We went to the bus station to buy a one-way ticket to the monastery and ended up on a tour bus to all sorts of places we hadn't planned on seeing. Not part of the plan, but it was really fun - we felt like real Chinese tourists for the day, being rushed around from place to place following a tour guide with a big flag!! It was fun.
The stops on the way to Shaolin included a Temple, a Confucious academy (temple looking place) and a small Shaolin (just another temple really!). By the time that was over it was quite late in the day and we were itching to see the real Shaolin!! But they were interesting places and I'm glad they were included in the tour. The first temple we went to was my favourite... it's many buildings stretched up into the mountainside and it was a really lovely walk in the trees. They also had a group of four iron men statues that we had to rub - the Chinese believe that if you rub these statues and then touch a sore part of your body, that part will be healed... so dutifully rubbed ourselves all over these iron men - ha ha ha!!

We finally arrived at the Shaolin Monastery at about 3pm and had to rush to watch the last kung-fu performance of the day. That was amazing!!! These boys certainly know their stuff... we ooohed and aaahed over all their cool moves!

Talk about flexible.

After the kung-fu show we were free to wander around the area until about 6pm. There are so many things to see here that we didn't get to half of them but we really enjoyed the things we did see. My favourite was the pagoda forest... loads of pagodas all over the mountainside, so many that I'm sure you'd get lost if you were there alone at night!! We also bargained for some beads from vendors, and I now have a lovely set of black wooden beads adorning my wrist!

Boys practicing outside one of the temples.

The pagoda forest.

Once the tour of the monastery was over, we jumped back on the bus and set out for home. I'd even begun to miss our adopted Chinese family over the course of the day. We got back at about 8pm feeling extreemly guilty as the family had been waiting for us since 6pm! Oops. But all was forgotten soon enough and we sat down to have supper with them and share our stories from the day. We were so exhausted that we could barely make conversation by the end of the evening, so excused ourselves and went off to bed.

On Monday we'd thought to have a little sleep-in as our train was only at midday... but that was not to be! Woken again at about 7:30 our 'dad' had breakfast ready on the table and continued to hurry us up all morning so that we were at the train station at about 10am. Two hours early but otherwise ok. They were such a wonderful family and took such good care of us that we can't really complain about being woken up too early!!

So what we've concluded is that the Chinese are the most hospitable and lovely people... you just have to find the right ones :)

The Grasslands of Inner Mongolia...

2006-08-17T13:48:00.000+08:00

So we're back... back from the green green grass of Huitenxile (if you can't pronounce that don't worry! It's a bit like this: "hey-ten-she-ler").

Martin and I had a great time, only slightly marred by the annoying lack of tall grass. Before we left Hohhot on Tuesday, I had images of riding horses bareback through long grasses for miles on end. The grasslands are nothing like that. The horses we rode were led by people and cost a pretty penny, and the grass was so short it was as if a giant walked the lands each morning with an enormous lawn-mower!! But it was lots of fun nonetheless.

We left our hotel at about 9am in a little minibus filled with the two of us, 2 Japanese guys and a South Korean guy. (We later met up with another minibus with 2 Dutch girls, a Korean/American guy and an older Korean lady) Our guide spoke wonderful English so that was a huge plus! But he was rather obsessed with getting us to sing songs in the car on the way there... he kept saying "Japan sing song now", then "Ok now you Korea!". It was very funny, the entire 2-day trip he refered to people by their nationality... screaming "Oi Holland, come here!" or whatever. This country-name-calling didn't extend to Martin and I however, for some strange reason he'd decided that we were a lovely couple and needed special treatment - he refered to us as "happy family". Sweet.

After a 2-hour ride through some gorgeous lands (mountains, green hills, rivers etc) we finally arrived at the gatepost to the grasslands. It was so beautiful, just miles upon miles of grassy plains in all directions, sheep and horses dotted all over and nothing else to be seen. As we drove further in we started to see small groupings of yurts here and there. Some were rather touristy, more like round concrete houses than anything else but, luckily for us, we stayed in slightly more authentic ones. They still had concrete floors but with material sides and roof. The "happy family" were given a yurt all to ourselves... continuing the special treatment (I'm not complaining!), which was nice because we could then make a nice big bed in the middle so we could sleep away from the sides (where all the nasty bugs live!).

After we'd all settled in, we were given lunch in a big communal yurt in the centre of our little 'village'... I went in rather sceptical as I'd heard from the American's we met in Datong that Mongolian food consisted purely of mutton, with salty milk tea on the side! True enough, there was the mutton, all on the bone ready to be gnawed. But luckily enough, there were enough tasty side dishes to fill all of us - lots of veggies and other Chinese delights. (I must say though, that Martin really enjoyed the mutton, I think he was filling up after almost 3 years of no lamb!!) I had been craving steamed buns before we arrived and there were even some of them on the table for me!! Lovely lunch. Pity I can't say the same about the milk tea... lovely black tea with milk, all hot and ready to be drunk, with salt instead of sugar!!! What's going on??? It's a traditional Mongolian drink which is served throughout the day and with every meal... but I just couldn't stomach it. Even when the wind picked up and it was really cold outside I couldn't bring myself to drink it, I would rather have plain hot water!!!

After lunch we were given free time until the evening, and after chatting with all our new tour buddies, we all decided that this was a perfect time to go horse riding.
I was excited, having not been on a horse since my own horse died when I was about 15 years old. 10 years later... could I still ride? Did I still know what to do? Help! But Martin was even worse off... he'd never ridden before!
Neither of us needed to have worried however... the Mongolian horses were really small and we weren't even allowed to ride freely... we were all led by the horses owner! A little disappointing but nothing compared to what happened to Martin and I next...

We all set off in a big group, all of us planning on a one-hour ride (too expensive for any longer!). Martin and I soon noticed that we were lagging behind the others though, and wondered why?? My horse, poor thing, kept stopping and trying to turn around as her foal had not followed us so she was worried. We knew our guide had spoken to the two people leading our horses and told them to keep the "happy family" together, but this was still no reason to seperate us from the rest of the group (also only riding for 1 hour). After a while we were turned around and headed off back to the yurts, strange considering we'd only been riding for about 20 minutes. After taking us back past the yurts, collecting the foal on the way, I made a comment about the time and they agreed to continue walking us a little further.

This entire time the woman leading my horse bugged me by banging my leg and asking for money. We thought that they were trying to say that after the ride, we should give them the money directly instead of giving it to the offical guy back at camp. I had no problem with that, thinking that unless we did that they wouldn't see half the money we paid, but was still really irritated by the constant leg-banging!

As we walked across the silly little bit of grass behind our yurts, us thoroughly annoyed that we hadn't stuck with our friends, Martin's horse suddenly fell over!! I'd noticed it's leg was a little strange but hadn't realised it was that serious. Poor Martin got such a shock, but luckily didn't get hurt (he just leaped off the horse like an experienced rodeo clown!). After that, plus the troubles with the annoying woman leading my horse, we decided that we just wouldn't ride anymore. I got off and we started walking back to our 'home'. They followed, of course, not really understanding why we were cross. The guy just kept asking for Martin to get on another horse he had standing by, but he was frustrated and angry and refused to even talk to him. When we got back, we called our guide to help with interpreting and after many a word we finally settled on a price (much lower than our hour ride should have costed) and told the man to fix his poor horsey!

Once the money was settled, we sat down outside to take in a bit more of the gorgeous countryside around us.... that didn't happen however, as the rain clouds rolled in and within about 2 minutes it was pouring! The weather changes so quickly out there.

We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with our new friends inside a yurt and waiting for supper. At 6pm we were driven to a place to watch horse racing and wrestling... but that didn't happen either! The rain had made the ground really wet and slippery so it was too dangerous. Never mind... back to the yurts for dinner and some Mongolian music/alcohol/dancing.

The dinner was nice, pretty much the same as lunch (and more yummy milk tea!), but it was unfortunately accompanied by the strongest, most foul liquor I've ever had to drink. Nobody could bow out of drinking it as it is considered a Mongolian custom, and is presented to you by brightly dressed 'Mongols' with sashes... but I did at least manage to swop some of mine with my new Korean friend and fill my glass with water (sneaky!!). The custom dates back to the days of old Ghengis Khan, when he apparently out-drank an opponent and thereby won a battle before it had even began.

Later that evening Martin and I enjoyed some star-gazing (in the cities you just don't see them!) and then played cards with our two new Dutch friends.

The next morning we woke up at 4:30am (as instructed by our guide) and went out to watch the sunrise. It was freezing!! I couldn't believe how cold it was... and the annoying thing was that the sun didn't bloody-well rise till almost 6am!! But by that time we were already back in bed... we'd given up after about 30 minutes. It was lovely and quiet out there, but sitting in a duvet watching the sky not change from bluey-orange to redy-orange wasn't that fun.

When we got up again for breakfast at about 8am, our guide told us that because we were the "happy family" and he felt so bad about our terrible horse ride the day before, he'd paid for us to go out for another hour. What a lovely guy. So off we went... riding lovely fit horses out into the wilderness (if you manage to avoid seeing the windmills all over the place!). We had a great time, got sunburnt, and came back feeling wonderful. While we waited for the Korean guys to come back from their 2 hour ride, Martin and I went for a gorgeous walk out into the grasslands... we met a lovely shepard there and just enjoyed the sunshine. It was so lovely that we almost got left behind - we had to practically run back to meet the car at 11:30!

Once back in Hohhot, we spent time just wandering around the city, buying food in the supermarket ready for the train journey, and doing nothing much else!!!

And that's the story of the grasslands...

From Datong to Hohhot...

2006-08-12T13:04:00.000+08:00

Hello from Datong - the third most polluted city in the world!!!

Martin and I have enjoyed our time here, despite the non-changing gray skies and constant need to cough!! We're leaving this evening on a train bound for Hohhot in Inner Mongolia... from there we're hoping to take tours into the grasslands and drink yak milk while riding horses with our hair flowing behind us like in the days of old!!

Datong has been fun... we've done most of the touristy things there are to do here, and done it nice and slowly too. (I've been a little sick so it's nice not to have to run around getting everything done in one day!).

The day we arrived after our night train from Beijing, we pretty much did nothing. Wonderful. We slept, found the internet cafe, chatted to the foreigners in our room (an Italian girl and a French guy), and ate delicious knife-cut noodle from a smiley-faced man in a dirty little shop on the side of the road. The method they used to create this culinary delight was really fascinating... the chef moulds a huge piece of dough into a long poo shape (sorry no other way to describe it!) and then uses a huge grater thing to slice pieces off... the pieces fly through the air into a huge bowl of boiling water. After they're cooked, he puts some into a bowl, adds a meaty sauce and a boiled egg - and its ready!! Yum yum.

On Thursday we got on a local bus, off to do some sightseeing (the only reason foreigners come to this smoggy city). Located at the southern foot of Wuzhou Mountain about 16 km west of Datong, are the beautiful Yungang Grottoes. They were built against the mountain and extend about 1 km from east to west. The construction of the caves began in 453 and took 40,000 people 50 years to complete. The 53 grottoes in Yungang Grottos include about 1,000 niches with more than 51,000 statues – a treasure-trove of cave art that combines traditional Chinese art forms with foreign influence, particularly Greek and Indian. The tallest sculpture here is a 17-meter high Buddha, and Martin and I had a hilarious time trying to get a picture of it with us in the foreground :)

The big Buddha looking all tall!

Yesterday we were up for some more exciting sightseeing, but decided to stick to what the city itself had to offer, rather than take a bus for over an hour out of the city. After walking down a rather deserted and skanky looking road, in what we thought was the direction of the city centre, it started to rain. We were hungry (we'd missed the free breakfast provided by the hotel because we didn't wake up in time!), tired of walking and frustrated at not seeing anything that resembled a bustling city centre. We waited out the rain under the overhang of an old half-torn-down building and ate dry bread with some spam sausages (oooh mouth-watering!).
After the rain stopped, we set out again... and horray, we found a street that looked more like what we wanted. Managed to get on a bus into town and thought our troubles were over!

The only problem was I was getting tired and grumpy. Still not over my fluey sickness, I just felt drugged and could hardly put one foot in front of the other! I needed food... the only problem was it was that silly time between lunch and early dinner when nothing is open. The stalls on the sides of the road close, the restaurants shut their doors and us poor foreigners go hungry!! Martin decided he needed to look after his woman... and summoned up some ladies on the street to help us find some food! (seriously, usually he just calls out to any old person and they rush to his aid... very handy). Soon we were surrounded by 3 eager ladies all wanting to try out their English skills. We ended up spending the day with a lovely 20 year old called Shan-Shan. She said it was her first opportunity to speak to English people so she was excited to practice her English.

She was so sweet, walked around the city centre with us all day - showing us the sights. We saw various temples, a drum tower and the Nine-dragon Wall. I found the wall the most interesting... it was built in 1392 to conceal the palace of a Ming dynasty (1368-1644) prince. The walls were built all over the country during Imperial China to hide various palaces and temples from the common people. The one we saw is the biggest and best preserved wall left in China.

The nine-dragon wall:

Today we finally got up in time to make the free breakfast... and it actually wasn't that bad. We had steamed buns, boiled eggs and a fried dough thing that reminded me a lof of koeksisters back in South Africa! Yum. Martin did a good job of pilfering some extra eggs for our lunch and we left the 5th floor full and ready for the day.
Not that we've done much... packed up our stuff and walked all of 5 minutes down to this internet cafe! Taxing. Later we'll pop to the supermarket (we're going to find an electrical mosquito repellant thing... no malaria for us!!).

That's all for now... Inner Mongolia here we come :)

Dandong, Chengde and back to Beijing!

2006-08-06T19:16:00.000+08:00

More news from Kate and Martin is here!!

Dandong:

Our last day in Dandong, before leaving for Chengde, included a trip to find the "Museum to Commemorate Aiding Korea Against US Agression". This is a story all of its own... a story of pain, suffering, and hunger - on our part!!! We were supposed to take a bus (directed by some dude on the internet) out of Dandong and get off at the sports stadium. Simple (supposedly!).

However, we ended up on a 2 hour bus journey so far out of Dandong that we started driving through potholes and flooded roads in rural China. No sports stadium in sight. Martin even forced us to get off at one stage (note: it was POURING with rain! serious thunderstorm) to investigate a building that looked like the one he'd seen on the internet... unfortunately it was only a school, surrounded by a moat of fast flowing flood water (which we crossed... me in trainers!).

What to do? After securing the help of the bus driver, the bus ticket lady and many locals from the streets, we decided to take the same bus back into Dandong and try again. We'd tried all our Chinese, even drawn a little picture of a fighter jet, and American, Korean and Chinese flag - all to no avail. No one had any clue of where we were trying to go.

At last, when almost back at the bus station where we'd started our journey, a guy pointed out the elusive sports stadium! Success!! We jumped off the bus feeling elated and ready to see the museum.

But Murphy was out to get us again! After another hour walk around following all the instructions from the internet and even searching up random streets we were still no closer to finding the damn museum. The only thing we could see was a huge memorial column on a hill. It couldn't be that we thought.

But in the end... it bloody was. After snacking on a few sandwiches we'd made earlier, we climbed up the hill and discovered to our frustration that the museum was there all the time!! By now it was 4:30pm and it shut at 5pm so we were reluctant to spend a lot of money on the entrance fee to get in. Martin did manage a good wander around and an oggle at all the manly machines outside though :)

Chengde:

We took an overnight train to Chengde... a great idea because it saves money for a hotel and we wake up in the new town early in the morning ready for the day! This was the plan, however, we made the critical mistake of picking the cheap upper bunks. They were stinking hot and mosquitoes ate us while we stewed in our own sweat (like when you wake up from smelling your own odour, sweating in a sticky tent). The fans turned off at 10pm and all the Chinese people wanted the windows closed... why? We're not so sure. We even sneakily tried to open the windows after everyone had gone to sleep, but the old man underneath us decided to close them again! Grrrr...

In Chengde we had a massive slice of sightseeing pie, but at a cost. Oh the pain of handing over all our hard earned cash to get a glipse of a temple and some mountains! We went to the "Temple of Universal Peace", which is one of the twelve temples built on the outskirts of Chengde during the Qing dynasty. Inside we were treated to the TALLEST, oh yes, TALLEST wooden Buddha in the WORLD. ("The Goddess of Mercy" rising to a staggering 22.3 metres, with 42 arms and weighing 110 tons, even if this was mostly dust!)

After this we headed for the Imperial Summer Villa, a vast area of land that is walled in and was home and office to many emperors, including Martin's favorite emperor who was one of the emperors during China's imperial boom period.

While wandering the acres of beautiful pagoda-dotted land in the Villa, we ate disgusting stawberry jam-filled rolls that we'd bought thinking they were normal plain ones in the shop! We went for a paddle in a paddle boat around the lake, saw some wild reindeer with massive antlers and generally had a relaxing day. We went for a walk into the outer regions of the villa (the mountainous untouristy areas), not bothering to take the internal bus (too expensive). What luck... we trekked for some time and then came upon a beautiful pagoda on top of a hill where we watched the sunset behind the mountains. Quite stunning! The perfect end to a perfect day.

We left Chengde the next day and now find ourselves super relaxed in a cheap Beijing hostel. Tomorrow we're going to get our jabs (the last ones) and then it's off to Datong. We haven't read too much about it but know that it boasts cheap accomodation and some fun stuff to see, including another part of the Great Wall and some caves and more temples. Cool.

So that's all our news for now.
Bye bye xxx

The Easternmost part of The Great Wall

2006-07-27T13:59:00.000+08:00

As internet access isn't too expensive in this little town, I've decided to pop down here again and fill you in on another little adventure Martin and I had yesterday!

We woke up quite early and got some more washing done... oh yes, hand-washing is becoming our new thing! My poor hands are a bit raw from the soap but at least it doesn't cost anything! Besides we only have 3 outfits each so we're not exactly overloaded with goods :)

After the washing, we decided to explore a bit more outside Dandong. It's quite a sleeply little city really, nothing much happens away from the Yalu river and all the N.Korea-spotting excitement!!

We took a 40min bus ride out of the city, and got off at the Tiger Mountain Great Wall. This is the most eastern (and northern I think but not sure) part of the Great Wall, so we were excited to see it. We're hoping to see all the wall extremities so to speak!

Although this part of the wall was a little disappointing in length (really short compared to the "Badaling" section we saw outside of Beijing), it was still really beautiful. We walked up the steep steps to the top section and sat up there eating our sandwiches and enjoying the views. From here you can see both North Korea and China... the Chinese side being very populated, full of houses and farmlands etc, and the N. Korean side being utterly boring. Nothing to see besides grasslands and the odd bit of tributary river.

Later we walked back down again, and after being accosted by a few taxi drivers, we managed to find the bus back to Dandong again.

Last night we went for a walk down to the Yalu River with Tom (a British guy staying in the same hotel as us), and we ate half a watermelon while watching a cool water display and fireworks. What we found so interesting is that at night, there are no lights on the N. Korean side of the river... it's almost as if you're looking out to sea! During the day it's not that interesting either, but at least you can see some people and some bushes! Strange.

After the walk along the rivers edge the boys wanted a beer, so we stopped at an outside entertainment area - patio chairs and tables in front of a stage area where random people come up and amuse the locals! We managed to make a very strange drunk new friend.... in a nutshell he was a total nutter!! Tight black leather pants, a black t-shirt with a scary face on it and the best part - the mullet to challenge all other mullets!!! He sat with us for over an hour, slurring his words and trying to make conversation. The funniest part were the wierd things he kept saying - like "China Dandong" and "English" mixed with other things in Chinese... not entirely sure what he was on about but he seemed genuinely excited about his new foreign friends!

We left as soon as we felt we could (after our new friend payed for the beers) and got home to some much needed sleep!!!

More news from afar...

2006-07-25T20:04:00.000+08:00

Right then... be warned!! This is a long blog, but we wanted to update you on all that's been happening. We've travelled this path...
Harbin - Yanji - Songjanghe - Dandong - Dalian - Dandong (again). Here goes!!!

We've now travelled around the North East of China and are currently
heading back towards Beijing in time for our 2nd lot of Hep A+B jabs. This should be us all vaccinated for India and, oh yeah, the rest of Asia!

We left Harbin on Saturday the 25th for Yanji. The train was a 14 hour
seated marathon with smelly people staring at the new attraction - us.
The toilets were special, but at least the windows opened so Martin got a
little air while he squatted in less than hygenic surrounds!!

While on this mega train journey we started to get funny tummies! Oh dear, our run-down bodies had not reacted too well to something we had eaten/drunk. I spent three days with horrid stomach cramps, and Martin had to go to the local pharmacy and act out my problems.... it must have been very funny for the locals watching him jump and squirm on the floor pretending to have diarrhea and tummy cramps. Anyway... the pills worked, even if they smelt very fishy!

Martin saw the main street in Yanji, boring really, but that was all that was on
offer, other than a bridge! I saw nothing more than the inside of the hotel room. Nice place!

We left Yanji on Tuesday the 18th, for Songjanghe. A very small and
insignificant place, save for the fact that it's the best place to reach
Changbai Mountain (A big crater lake in a national park). What a big hassle getting there! First we took the bus to Erdaobaihe (teeeny town with nothing happening in it), then tried to take the train to Songjanghe, but the train
didn't leave until 1:00am. We had arrived at 2:00pm, so we would've had an 11 hour
wait. No way! We decided to camp out for a bus, that may or may
not go to our destination. At one stage a uniformed man came up and offered to
share a lift with us in a taxi to Songjanghe... we synically asked how much he wanted and he told us its "only Y120 (8 pounds)" "Velly good velly good". He took us for fools! Oh how we laughed!! The bus is Y40 (2.70 pounds) and the train is Y10 (60 pence) each. So we waited, and contiuned to smile while telling him to please leave us alone (in not such polite language of course!). After a few hours the last bus left, but they
hadn't given us a seat because they wait for other people who want to go
further and thus pay more. Common practice but very annoying!!! Eventually the uniformed
man got more desperate, and the price began to drop. We resisted, "make it
cheaper", "too expensive", we kept saying.... and at the end we got him
down
to Y25 (1.60 pounds) each, a little more expensive than a bus/train but a quicker and more
comfortable ride in a taxi. The journey was 2 hours along dirt roads
etc, sunning scenery and fresh mountain air.

In Songjianhe we got dropped off right outside our hotel that we had
organised over the phone. We'd found a telephone number of a place that
did rather cheap sounding tours of Changbaishan with accom and food
included so jumped at the chance!! When we arrived the lovely girl that we'd spoken to on the phone to organise all of this and who spoke wonderful English (her name is Oprah) greeted us
with
the manager of the hotel. Our room was amazing - huge - and everyone
seemed to be bending over backwards for us... nice! We had a delicious
supper of rice, eggs, beef etc and collapsed into bed exhausted after
our tiring journey.

On Wed morning we were up eating breakfast at 7am and then went through
to settle our bill before getting on our tour bus for the day. That was
when disaster struck!! We'd been talking of paying 300 "dollars" for the
accom and food and tour all inclusive... so Martin and I started to
hand
the manager Y300 (Chinese currency). But oh no... she simply looked
agast, shook her head and got Oprah to explain that she wanted
US$300!!!
WHAT?? When the realisation of what she was saying finally got through
to our brains we were in dispair!!! No wonder everyone was being super
nice and friendly and giving us free drinks all the time... we were
supposedly paying through our noses for it all!! Yikes. Not sure how
they thought that 2 young people walking around in the same clothes for
3 days straight could afford that kind of price... but still. We slowly
explained that we had no US currency on us, the manager got cross and
then demanded UK pounds! Again, we explained that all we had were yuan
and after a bit of a grump she agreed that we could pay in yuan. The
total price came to over Y2700 (185 pounds)!!! And when you think that
we were expecting to pay Y300 (20 pounds) you can imagine just what
went
through our heads. Yikes. Get out of here fast!

After many long discussions and apologies etc etc... we managed to get
a
really good deal. We agreed not to have Oprah come with us as a tour
guide and rather do it all ourselves, not to eat at the hotel anymore
and to move to another smaller room for the next night. Oprah was
amazing and managed to bargain down all the prices for us to something
we could afford... somewhere around Y800 (55 pounds). Still more than
we
wanted to pay but we both really wanted to see Changbaishan so agreed
that it was ok.

The day turned out to be amazing!!! We took a bus for 2 hours through
the gorgeous mountainside, eventually arriving at the base of
Changbaishan - a huge crater lake formed from a volcano that erupted a
whole bunch of years ago! We had to hike up more than 1300 steps to the
summit... and when we got there we were just amazed!! One of the most
beautiful places in the world met our eyes. A huge crater lake
surrounded by mountains, volcanic ash and rocks all over the place. It
was just stunning. We sat up there and ate our lunch and marvelled at
the beauty of nature.
Later we took the bus to another tourist attraction in the region - a
big gorge with stick-y-out-rock things formed when the volcano erupted.
Also lovely but not as striking as the lake.

Later we arrived back at our hotel, asked for help getting a train ticket to
Dandong, and that was that! We had a lovely supper of beef kebabs and a
roll each for Y5 together (that's about 30 pence!!!), walked to the
train station to buy the tickets and got to bed.

On Thursday morning, we took the train to Dandong - a lovely little town that we came to to see North Korea. The train journey was another nightmare-ish ride... 16 hours of sitting!!!
In Dandong we went on the bridge that crosses the Yalu River... the naughty
Americans bombed the bridge during the Korean war, so you walk half way and the bridge ends... but it is fun to walk half-way into the river and there are loads of cool shrapnel marks to see. You can't actually go into N. Korea unless you're a
cool nation and you have the money to pay through the nose (Y8000 or 550pounds) to go on an expensive tour (where the rules stipulate that no one can talk to the locals or leave the
bus
and there is a strict itinerary).
In fact Americans, South Koreans and
Israelis are NOT allowed to enter N. Korea, even on a tour. While on the bridge we saw North Korea... well
actually just
lots of bushes, fishermen and children playing. Dull, but only a few
people can say they've seen N.Korea :) Yay for us.

After another day in Dandong, hand washing ALL our clothes (oh yes, we are washer-women of note!) we headed for Dalian. A great big city full of European
architecture. Impressive because of the wide streets, clean pavements
and clean people. Very convienent, too. However the flip-side was
expensive hotels, even outside the city, and not much to do but look at
the clean pavements and clean people. We could have gone shopping, but
that's just silly when we have a tight budget! A lovely old man
spotted
us and spoke really good English, (another strange phenomenon in this city) and wanted to help. We asked for a cheap
place to stay..... oh dear, not so easy. We walked in a large circle
for over 2 hours with our heavy backpacks on our backs, asking small hotels for cheap rooms to no avail!! We even found two hostels from
the
guide that no longer exsited! Great. In the end we
settled
for the cheapest place we could find (ironically the first place we'd asked at!!) and made plans to leave sharpish before all our
money was spent on lavish two star hotels at peak season! A lovely
room, but we couldn't justify Y188 (12 pounds) a night for this place! No choice
but head straight back for Dandong (4 hours on a bus) again to stay in the
friendly, clean hotel for Y60 (4 pounds).

We've decided we really like Dandong... its clean (ish), the people are friendly, and everything is cheap! We're planning on relaxing here for a few days before heading off for pastures new...

So that's all for now - sorry if it took you years to read :)

First news from the East...

2006-07-15T18:37:00.000+08:00

Ok so if you've just read Martin's blog - don't read this!! I just want to blog the same so you all know my blog is working too! It's so annoying not being able to see the blog because of Chinese restrictions on blogging. Stupid. But here we are....

We're in Harbin at the moment (the place that had the big toxic waste spill last year) and in a few hours we're taking the overnight train to Jilin. The reason we're off to this remote little place is that from there we can take a day tour to a volcano and climb it!! Exciting. Then we're off to Dandong, really near the N. Korean border - we hope to take a boat and get a glimpse at that cut-off Communist state :)

We've had a good time in Harbin - its been super hot (not the cooler climes we were hoping for), but lovely. We arrived late on Wednesday night after a 12 hour train journey from Beijing. We got off the train and were immediately attacked by various touts trying to get us to stay in various hotels. We ended up following one woman to a stinky, dirty hole in the floor... not great. We continued walking along the road and we're grabbed by another lady - again, a stinky, hole in the floor. Finally another man arrived and got us to follow him inside - what did we find??? Oh yes, another stinky dirty hole - but this one was above ground! Bonus. We haggled and bargained our way to cheapness!!! Only Y100 for 3 nights... not bad. (that's about 6 pounds for 3 nights).

The room was fine, but the letcherous pervert who owned the building was less than desirable! The toilets I shall not even begin to explain! Lets just say that we are both now true backpackers saving every penny!!

In Harbin, we've done quite a few nice things - wandered down Zhongyang Dajie (famous street full of Russian architecture), eaten in a wonderful cheap dumpling restaurant (best dumplings we've tasted in China), seen the Japanese Germ Warefare base (full of interesting propaganda) and seen a lovely Russian-style Church thing.

I managed to have a little fall down (up the stairs ha ha!) and bruised my knee and pride rather badly! I've had to hobble around for a few days now... such a cool girl.

Ok, better be off. I'll be back.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Aaaaand.... we're off!!!

2006-06-27T10:33:00.000+08:00

So the time has come... Martin and I are finally off on our adventure through Asia!! We'll try to keep this blog updated when we can, but rumour has it that China has blocked "Blogger.com" so we might not be able to do so in China. Other countries should be fine.

Never fear though... where we can blog... we will blog :)

Bye bye!!!

Saying goodbye to students!

2006-06-16T19:55:00.000+08:00

Ok so I left work at the end of May and now it's nearly the end of June, but I have finally got all my pictures of my students organized. For most of you these pictures will mean nothing, but I'm mainly writing this so that one day I can look back and see these pictures and laugh.

I already miss some of them so much, I've been back to school a few times and had students trying to physically drag me to the classrooms to teach them... it's nice to be appreciated!!

MONDAY:

5pm - 6:50pm H2/K4 with Mei.

I taught H2 class for one year - such lovely students (5-9 years old)... some super wild ones who like to climb on desks, under desks, on other students - all while I'm trying to teach!!! Recipe for crazy class!
Jason, Hank, Jim, Simon, Wakey, Oliver, Leo, Gary, Ray, Derek.
Helen, Julia Pong, Julia Wu, Lilian.

My farewell on the white board.

6:55pm - 8:45pm F4/FEN post-graduate class.

I taught F4 since Dec 2004 when Lorraine had to take another class, so this one was given to me. Lovely students, starting out with a huge PG class until now, with only 6 students.

Jessy, Julia, Jane, Tony, me and Emily

Miki, me and Emily.

TUESDAY:

5pm - 6:50pm P5/N12 with Angie.

P5 is one of my absolute favorite classes, I taught them since I arrived in Taiwan and we have so much fun together when I'm teaching. A wonderful set of students who try hard and really enjoy learning.
Louis, Hank, Aesop, Kevin, Jacky, Dennis, Eric Kuo, Eric Huang, Andy, Alan, Jason.
Angel, Jenny Wang, Jenny Li, Peggy, Molly, Kiki, Irene.

Pretending to 'study' so I could take a picture.

All the crazy kids.

Me and Jenny with Molly and Jacky in the background.

Dennis is my new boyfriend!

Me and Louis. (Louis' father helped Martin and I move to our new apartment)

6:55pm - 8:45pm E11/N9 with Emily.

Another class that I taught for my entire time at Hess, wonderful students and lots of fun! Many came from high level K classes that I taught.
Benson, Mike, Andy, Peter, Jeff, Tommy, George, Stanley, Wayne, Joe, Frank.
Barbie, Iris, Jennifer, Lily, Joy Wu, Joy Lai, Joanna.

Here we are!

I will miss Emily so much!

Mike and I.

Barbie, Iris and I with one of the presents I got from Barbie.

WEDNESDAY:

1:30pm - 3:20pm I2/N4 with Angie.

I taught this class for almost a year with Angie as my CT. Nice class but with some bad eggs that have been hard to deal with :)
Alice, Sandra, Fan, May, Peggy, Sara, Tiffany,
Daniel, Jerry, Aries, Henry, Benjie, Neill, Issac, Simon, Shawn, Nick, David,

3:30pm - 5:20pm C9/N10 with Daisy.

Another favorite of mine... Daisy and I started the class together when I was a new teacher and she a new CT. We've both loved teaching them for over 2 years and just laugh and laugh with them.
Mary, Tina, Grace, Angela, Annie, Salena.
Eric, Iverson, Henny, Alan, Allen, Ben, Luke, Thomas, Jason, Peter.

Here's Eric and Iverson pretending to cry on my last day with them!

All of us.

6pm - 7:50pm D2/N2 with Emily.

My newest class, only taught them for about 5 months when I left but I loved them! Emily and I have such fun teaching together - we just gel. We both have the same sense of humour with the kids and love teasing them.
Shenny, Judy, Polly, Cindy, Lucy, Amy, Eva, Sandy, Kiki, Jessy,
Benson, Vincent, Jackson, Leo, Steven, Allen, Peter, Toby, Jimmy, Oscar, Luke.

Emily with D2

Me with D2

Polly, Shenny, Judy, Lucy and Cindy staying after class to hug me and say "don't go"!

THURSDAY:

5pm - 6:50pm O4/N3 with Sophia.

Such a big and wild class this one - didn't manage to get any pictures as I was at home nursing my wisdom tooth face when I should have been teaching them.
Michael Chu, Sam, Willson, Hugo, Steven, Martin, Well, Kevin, Jackey, Andy, Ray, Aaron,
Daisy, Amy, Ruby, Mia, Nancy, Lily, Melissa, Evon, Emma, Tina.

6:55pm - 8:45pm F1/N4 with Emily.

My top number one most fun-loving class this one. Emily and I just love them... they are only in N4, which is a low level, they've only studied English for a year, but they are amazing. They never speak Chinese in class and are hilarious when talking to each other because they use any English word they know to get their point across.
Ryan, Brian, Nick, Sam, Tony, Frank, Vito, Victor, Allen, Glen, Alex, Daniel, Tim
Wendy, Winnie, Amy, Jenny, Heidi, Vivian, Sally, Emma, Julia

Me with F1 class

In the class.

Ryan being crazy showing off. (You can see Jeff and Peter from my E11 class in the background)

Emily and her new boyfriend Ryan

Me and Winnie

Ryan with my message!

FRIDAY:

6:55pm - 8:45pm E10/N13 with Anne.

My last class of the week - the only other one that I've taught since arriving in Taiwan. Lovely students, just quiet with any other teacher but me! When they started N13 (a pretty high level) Anne and I changed their seating pattern, so now we sit in a square all facing each other.

Johnny, Michelle, Alex and Jeff.

May, Zack and Jenny.

Rain, Beer, Sun Moon Lake and The Formosa Aboriginal Cultural Village

2006-06-08T17:56:00.000+08:00

For the last week or more it has been raining non-stop here in Taiwan! Last week the rain got so bad we thought it was the beginning of a typhoon... serious flooding in the streets and around. I thought it would stop after the weekend but it's still going on... raining on and off. There's so much more rain predicted for 2006 compared to last years rainfall - I guess it's good for the country but a pain in the ass if you have to drive a scooter!!!

Last Friday Martin and I went for lunch at 'Little Italy' and while we were inside it just poured and poured outside. Here's my bike sitting in the flooded street.

But we were not to be stopped by the rain and on Friday night duly went out for a pint or two at the bbq bar in town.

Me and Pascal enjoying our drinks.

Katie and Duncan.

Here's Pascal's new mode of transport...

Saturday came and we REALLY felt like getting away for the weekend, out of Yuanlin, out of the city. But it was still raining like mad... in fact, it was the typhoon-y scary kind of rain too.
Oh well... we're young and adventurous - off we went anyway. Me, Martin, Katie and Duncan all donned our rain jackets and set off for Sun Moon Lake.

The Legend of Sun-Moon Lake:

Once upon a time, a native tribe called Shao lived in the mountains near the central part of Taiwan. The people planted corn, taro, and rice on their farmlands. Sometimes they would go fishing and hunting. They lived a peaceful and carefree life.

On a sunny morning while the Shao people were working diligently, they heard a huge sound. "Boom!" and the land shook violently. "Oh no! The sun is gone," everyone cried fearfully. They could not believe that the bright, shiny sun had disappeared before their eyes. They could not do anything else except help each other find his/her way home in the midst of darkness.
Fortunately, the moon came out at night. Everyone could see again in the moonlight and was able to do some work. Suddenly, another huge sound was heard. "Boom!" The houses were almost knocked down by this huge sound. "Oh no! The moon is also gone. What are we going to do?!" everyone cried desperately. Everyone was so frightened, and no one knew what had caused this incident.

Starting from that day, the sky did not have the sun or the moon. Darkness covered the entire world. The crops in the fields gradually wilted; the fish hid in deep water; the flowers were not blooming; and the animals seemed lifeless. People kept asking, "How can we live a life without sunlight? Without sunlight, nothing grows."

A young couple, DaJianGe and ShuiSheJie, depended on growing corn for a living. Since the sun had disappeared, the crops had wilted; the corn did not have golden kernels anymore. One day, ShuiSheJie told her husband, "If the sun does not come out immediately, everyone in the village is going to die from hunger. We need to think of a plan." DaJianGe nodded his head and said, "The sun and the moon must have fallen into a deep valley. Let us go and search for them."
On the second day, both of them started toward the deep forest and were determined to find the sun and the moon. Each of them held a torch and started the journey bravely. They climbed and crossed numerous mountains, rivers, and forests. They also used countless torches but they could not find any sign of the sun and the moon. The whole world was still in darkness.

Finally, the couple arrived at a big mountain top. ShuiSheJie saw a dim light in front of her.She pointed to a lake opposite the mountain and said to DaJianGe, "Look! There is a shiny light on top of that lake. I bet the sun and the moon are in that lake." DaJianGe cried excitedly, "Yes! Yes! That must be the sun and the moon. Ha...Ha....We've found them." They ran towards the lake and discovered two fierce dragons playing with the two fire balls which were the sun and the moon.
"No wonder the sun and the moon disappeared. These two dragons stole the sun and the moon to be their playthings," cried both of them. DaJianGe and ShuiSheJie were really mad. They wanted to take the sun and the moon back from the dragons but were afraid of them. The couple sat on a big rock to think of a plan. However, they could not come up with any ideas.

Suddenly, white smoke came out from under the rock that they were sitting on. DaJianGe used his strength to push the rock away. They discovered a long, deep, and narrow underground passageway. The smoke was coming from the passageway. DaJianGe said, "There is someone living beyond the passageway. Let us go check and see."

They cautiously stepped down the passageway. As the curvy passageway got deeper, the atmosphere got damper and darker. After a while, they came upon red light emitted by a fire. The smoke got thicker. The young couple realized that they were in a kitchen; an old white haired woman was standing in the kitchen and cooking. ShuiSheJie asked softly, "Old lady, how are you?" The old woman was surprised. She raised her head and found two young people standing in front of her. She put down her cooking pot and said, "Ah! Where did you come from? I've not seen humans for a long time." The old lady also said, "Many years ago when I was working in the field, the dragons captured me and brought me here. They would not let me leave this place. They also forced me to cook them meals."

The young couple told the old lady the whole story of finding the sun and the moon. The old lady shook her head and said, " Both dragons are cruel and fierce. You two cannot defeat them." "No matter what, we are going to take the sun and the moon from the dragons," said the couple with determination.

"I know," the old lady said, "I have heard someone mention before that the dragons fear the golden scissors and the golden ax which are hidden under Ali Mountain. If you throw both items into the lake, the scissors and the ax will kill the dragons immediately. Then, you can bring back the sun and the moon."

DaJianGe said confidently, "We will find the golden ax and the golden scissors. After we kill the dragons, we'll come and save you." DaJianGe and ShuiSheJie left the old lady and started toward Ali Mountain. When they arrived at the foot of Ali Mountain, DaJianGe and ShuiSheJie found two strong wooden sticks and started digging. They dug day and night. They wouldn't stop until they found the golden scissors and ax.

After many days, Ali Mountain looked like a big hole. Suddenly, two shiny golden things jumped out from the ground. "That must be the golden scissors and the golden ax !" the couple yelled. They picked up the scissors and ax immediately and proceeded toward the lake. When they arrived at the lake, the dragons were playing with their "Fire Balls." ShuiSheJie threw the golden scissors, which flew straight toward the first dragon and cut its body into many sections. Blood sprung out like spring water. DaJianGe hurriedly threw the golden ax toward the other dragon. The dragon let out two horrible screams and its head was cut off. The lake was dyed by the dragons' blood. The sun and the moon floated on the shiny red lake.

After killing the dragons, the young couple saved the old lady. However, DaJianGe and Shui SheJie faced a major problem: how were they going to send the sun and the moon back into the sky? They were very puzzled. At this time, the old lady said. "I heard that if one ate the dragon's eyeballs, one would become very tall and very strong. After you two eat the dragon's eyeballs, you will have the strength to send the sun the moon back to the sky.

The young couple immediately dived into the lake to search for and remove the dragon's eyeballs. After they ate the eyeballs, DaJianGe and ShuiSheJie began to grow. Their heights increased inch by inch. When they got out of the water and stood on the shore, they were like two mountains. Together, the young couple held the sun and threw it into the sky with a strong force. The sun stayed in midair for awhile, then fell back down. They threw the sun once more but it fell back again. The situation with the moon was the same. The old lady yelled at the bottom of their feet, "Children, there are two big palm trees next to the lake. Use those trees to hold the sun and the moon up."

Each of the giants bent down and grabbed a tree. They put the sun on top of the palm tree and began holding it up slowly. Slowly the sun was raised higher and higher. After a day of hard work, the shiny red sun began to function normally in the sky. They also used the same method with the moon. When the world regained its light, the plants began to bloom and the people started to smile again. When the sun gradually finished its course, the moon started its own course in the sky.

As for DaJianGe and ShuiSheJie, they were afraid that the dragons might return; therefore, they stood guard beside the lake. After many years, their huge bodies eventually became two mountains. Those mountains are now called DaJian Shan and ShuiShe Shan. The lake is now called "SunMoon Lake".

To show their gratitude to the young couple, the people of Cao Zu dedicated an annual dance to the brave DaJianGe and ShuiSheJie. This dance is now called "The Holding Ball Dance." In this dance, people throw a beautiful and colorful ball into the air and then try to use a bamboo stick to hold it; this dance symbolizes the brave actions of the young couple who saved the world.

So that's the story... I love the way that Taiwan has so many legends and stories that go with each place or festival.

Katie and Duncan eating in the cool restaurant... all-you-can-eat buffet dinner - YUM!!

We tried to stay at this beautiful hotel on the waters edge, but after being told it was NT12,000 (about 200 pounds) for the night we decided against it...

We loved playing with the settings on the camera... like the swirling lights?

Yeah!

Martin and Duncan.

Aargh - there's a Martin on my face!!!!

My cool picture.

Funny steps near the hotel that lead to nowhere...

View from the our hotel room the next morning (much more reasonably priced at NT2000 (33 pounds) for our twin double room). I must add here though that Martin and I did a good bit of bargaining for this hotel room... we got the price down from NT3500 - good practice for China where you have to bargain for almost everything apparently!

Some illegal bike parking right outside a restaurant.

The harbour.

I'm often bored on the back of the bike... so I entertain myself by singing or taking weird pictures!

Me and Martin mid-drive!

Sun Moon Lake

After a quick breakfast (noodles!!) at the harbour in Sun Moon Lake, we drove off to spend Sunday having some fun at the amusement park!!

The Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Village:

The Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Village is a theme park located 8 km east of Sun Moon Lake. It offers a variety of educational and recreational activities for the entire family. The Village blends exhibitions of indigenous culture, traditions and art with a theme park filled with thrilling rides and entertainment.

The Village abounds in cherry trees and manicured lawns. The story of Taiwan's indigenous peoples is told through reconstructions of their dwellings and ways of life and regular performances of dance and song.

The Shuishalien European Garden is well-maintained and visitors could take a stroll around it after enjoying the amusements in the Village.

Here we are ready for "Space Mountain"!!

The "Waikiki Wave" ride that the boys were too chicken for... but it was so much fun!

Katie and I ready to go!

The gang outside "Jurassic Cruise"

In the "Balloon Race"... Duncan and I were sitting backwards so we felt a little vomity!

Clouds rolling in...

It's raining - but we don't care!!

Preparing for the "Mayan Adventure" - the super fast rollercoaster that goes upside down and round and round... such fun!

Katie was the only one brave enough to go on the "UFO"... next time I won't eat before hand and I'll try it.

View from inside the "Skyline" cable car.

Oh it's fun to be so high!

I feel like Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

Us.

My pretty photo of the cable car from the ground.

Hamburgers and ice-cream... perfect for a day at a theme park!

One of the many aboriginal shows.

The beautiful European palace garden.

Dad and Dave... this is for you!

2006-06-04T15:26:00.000+08:00

"It's me precious innit!!!"

Have you seen this movie??

2006-06-03T11:49:00.000+08:00

If you haven't... do yourself a favor and watch it. I watched it last Tuesday night for the first time (at Katie's insistence) and LOVED it!!! Even though it's not even near Christmas time right now, I felt the Christmas cheer spread through me and was warmed to the cockles of my heart!

"Smiling's my favorite"

Dragon Boat Festival!!

2006-06-02T19:03:00.000+08:00

On May 31st, Taiwan celebrated Dragon Boat Festival, which officially falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. This means we had a public holiday to do as we please!!

The story of Dragon Boat Festival is interesting, although there are many different endings to the main story that I've heard and read about. The festival commemorates a very popular Chinese patriot and poet who used to write poems for the emperor (sometime during the 3rd century). This poet, named Chu Yuan, was considered the emperor's favorite, so he enjoyed a happy and healthy life. But after some time other people became very jealous of the poet's success, and spread many terrible rumours about him. When the emperor heard these rumours, he was outraged and banished the poet. Chu Yuan was so distraught that he committed suicide by throwing himself into the river. The people who loved and admired him frantically raced out into the river in boats to save him. But they were too late. So, instead of looking for his body, they threw rice dumplings (called "zong-zi") into the river so that the fish would eat the dumplings and not the poet's body.

Zong-zi are sticky steamed rice triangles, with various fillings, wrapped in bamboo leaves. The fillings can be all sorts of things like beans, dates, sweet potato, meat, nuts etc.

I'd already decided that I absolutely had to go to Lukang to watch the boat races a while back, as I've been in Taiwan for 3 years-worth of opportunities and had just never been until now. And I'm so glad I went!! We had a really fun day wandering around, watching the boats, tasting all sorts of delicious culinary delights and checking out the fun streets in Lukang. The weather was very strange, perfect for sunburns, and the day ended up a weird mixture of rain (pouring at times), hot hot hot sunshine and overcast cloudy grayness. (Martin has a particularly lovely sunglasses and farmer's tan now!!)

Feel the love :)

Aaaargh I'm being eaten...

Being towed to the starting line...

The race is on!!!

Would you wear this t-shirt???

Happy friends.

My cool flower.

There was a lot of weird and wonderful food on display at the various stalls scattered around the field, and we tasted many things, including rather delicious Malaysian satay chicken and Turkish ice-cream. Other things that we found, however, were not as mouthwatering!

Here's a mushroom growing in a bag (actually the fried mushrooms were delicious!!)

Lots of meat... please note the scarily small chicken on the left, I couldn't believe they would just cook a whole baby chicken like that!

We did a lot of hanging out near the edge of the river, where we found a lovely pile of rocks to sit on and just spent time chatting, away from all the crowds and loudspeakers by the stalls.

Martin trying to catch a fish!

Me.

Pretty bridge.

After about 3 hours of being there, we finally found Duncan! He'd taken the bus to Lukang from Changhua and another bus from Lukang to the river. After he'd feasted on a few things and watched a race or two we decided to drive back to Lukang and wander the streets a little. By this time the rain was coming down in sheets and we could barely see each other!! But we were not to be deterred... we donned our raincoats and got on the bikes. Martin and I were on his bike, and Duncan and Katie were on Miranda's little 50cc scooter that Katie had borrowed for the day. What a hilarious ride!! Miranda's bike's brakes sounded dreadful... they squeaked and squawked all the way and caused many a head to turn!!

Duncan was by far the wettest out of all of us!

Waiting in the rain...

In Lukang we found a vendor selling rice powder cookie things with a peanut filling - this is a picture of them steaming. He filled up the wooden cup with rice powder (or something like that), put a spoonful of peanut shavings in the middle, put its little lid on and then placed the whole thing on top of one of the 2 poles you can see. Totally delicious!!!

Final product!

Showing me their own personal rice cookie thing... mmmmmm...

Some fans in a lovely fan shop we found.

The beginning of the fan that I bought - the man painted a temple in Lukang.

The narrow back streets of Lukang are filled with beautiful little houses like this one - ancient Taiwan for all to see.

Lanterns hang in the streets as we leave...

Farewell Feasts

2006-06-01T20:22:00.000+08:00

What did I get up to last weekend?? Well, I spent most of my time eating lovely food with lovely people. As my mouth was still swollen and sore from the crazy wisdom tooth experience this was easier said than done, but I had a great time none-the-less.

It all started on Saturday night when we went to a lovely Japanese restaurant with lots of Hess friends. This was a farewell dinner for Miranda (one of the Chinese teachers at school) and I. Me, of course, being the one going off to travel China soon, and Miranda being the one who wants to either study more or look for another job. We went to the same restaurant that we all went to when Lorraine left Taiwan over a year ago, so it brought back sad and lovely memories of her too (lovely because she's lovely and wonderful and sad because she left me!!).

As it was a special evening we all got dressed up nice and pretty (with me trying all my best makeup tricks to make my massively swollen cheek not look so bad!! ha ha ha). Miranda, Katie, Martin and I met downstairs of our apartment block to go together. Lo and behold - Miranda and I were wearing our new matching shoes...

Aren't they pretty???

Once we arrived at the restaurant it was all just an eating and picture-taking frenzy!! Here's Katie, Rob and Adele looking lovely...

Me and Martin

Group Shot :)

Martin attempting to pick Ema's nose

Us with Maggie

Cute little green tea cups... good. Bitter cold tea... bad.

Miranda, me and Sandy

One of the interesting conversations of the evening involved rather scarily enormous raw oysters that were presented to us on a huge plate of ice. Now I've never been a fan of an oyster, they just taste too fishy to me... so I sat back and waited for the Chinese girls to tuck in. Thinking that, well you know, Chinese people eat really weird disgusting things that I wouldn't dream of putting anywhere near my mouth (e.g. chicken feet, chicken bum, stinky tofu, pig blood rice, intestines, duck head and neck.... do I really need to continue???). Strangely enough though, most of them wouldn't touch them - saying that they were raw and very big. Martin, Rob, Adele and Katie all had one and thought that they weren't bad, just needed a more tabasco-y sauce rather than ketchup!!

... here's one of the huge oysters...

.... here's Rob enjoying one of the huge oysters...

.... and here's Katie showing us the huge oyster she's just eaten!!!

I ate rather slower than everyone else (negotiating the cutting of sashimi with chopsticks is never a speedy task) but still I managed to pack away quite a meal. While I couldn't feast on all the lovely strips of beef and shrimp and sushi and salad, I made up for it all in the fruit and puddings at the end... even though I did manage to bite my cheek mid-watermelon. Ouch!!

I also gave everyone a little dance show - showing off my new bag that Angie gave me as a farewell gift.

This is the aftermath of our feeding frenzy...

Us all happy outside the restaurant

Shoe shot!

On Sunday, Miranda, Katie, Martin and I went out to eat lunch with an ex-student of mine, Alice. She really is a lovely child - always stays after class chatting to me and Katie until her mum comes to pick her up. She's now in Miranda and Katie's class and wanted to take us all out for lunch to say goodbye to me and Miranda. Katie will continue teaching her of course, but I think she will really miss Miranda. She was rather shy at the lunch, partly because Martin was there and partly because she was alone with us all outside of school I think.

Here she is hiding behind her jacket...

The Hess kids

Miranda and her enormous glass of tea (which she finished all by herself!!)

Katie

Alice and her green tea with jen-jw balls

Oh my poor mouth... I still can't feed myself properly :)

After lunch, Martin and I went home and spent hours on the computer sorting out visa cards and debit cards and all sorts for China. Not that we got anywhere much... but we're closer than we were!!! In the evening we went to have supper at Sienna (our favorite little Italian restaurant) with Katie and then came home. None of us felt like 'preparing for Monday' so we stayed up chatting about our childhoods and laughing at each others crazy stories!

Martin bought me these on the way home...

How I love Katie :)

It's been 4 days and I'm still having to keep ice on my mouth!

5 guesses as to what she's eating right now...

I will NEVER do that again!!!

2006-05-30T15:07:00.000+08:00

Oh my goodness... I finally have some time and space to tell you all about my wisdom tooth extraction experience. Never again will I undergo such an intensely painful operation!!!

Martin drove me through to Changhua Christian Hospital early last Thursday morning at about 8am. We waited a while until I was able to go in to see one of the dentists there. His first question: "So what's your problem?"... clearly I wasn't about to explain all of that (ha ha ha) so I just said that I needed to have a wisdom tooth extracted (all the while thinking... 'shouldn't you know this already???'). Second question: "Can you open your mouth?"...

And the next thing I knew he had a massive needle in there and was prodding me with a local anesthetic. Please note - only a LOCAL.

5 minutes later he started the job, after telling me it would take about 30 minutes for him to finish as it was rather "complicated".

1 hour passed and I was still in the chair, crying in agony, a nurse holding my hand and patting me, the dentist with a big metal clamp thing in my mouth still tugging!!! Such pain!!
A massive bucket full of my blood and saliva later, I was done. He explained that actually it was more complicated that he had thought and the tooth was so big and impacted that he had to cut it into 3 pieces to extract the whole thing. OW OW OW!! I was still crying and in such a state of shock that Martin had to do the rest - talk to the dentist, get my medicine, buy me ice, drive me home etc. Luckily for me... he's wonderful and has taken such good care of me these last few days.

It's now been 5 days and I still can't eat or talk properly. I have to go back to Changhua on Thursday for him to check it all out again and remove the stitches. If he even begins to suggest that I should have the other one taken out too I will run as fast as I can out of there....

P.S. (Even now just talking about it I can feel again the crunch as the metal clamp closed around my tooth.... )

Wisdom teeth!!

2006-05-24T21:32:00.000+08:00

SCARY CANARY: Tomorrow morning I have to go through to Changhua Hospital to have my bottom two wisdom teeth taken out. WHY WHY WHY!!!

See how happy I am when all my teeth are IN my mouth???

I guess it can't be helped though. It's just such a pain because this week was already super busy with me saying goodbye to students, filling out tax forms, selling my scooter, needing to go to the police station about staying in Taiwan longer than I'm allowed etc etc... and the added stress of removing some of my teeth does not help. It was such a shock too - I went to the dentist purely for a check-up this morning, because when my ARC (visa for Taiwan) is cancelled on May 31st, so too is my medical card and I wanted to get the cheap medical stuff done while I still have it. He took about 4 x-rays and then said in a loud voice "Oh no!". Not exactly what one wants to hear...
Aparantly I also have to have root canal surgery done too, great! But this will have to wait until later in June because I cannot put my poor mouth through that and wisdom teeth extraction all in the same week!!

So anyway, that's what I'll be doing tomorrow... in case you all were wondering...

Fun weekend...

2006-05-23T15:41:00.000+08:00

Last weekend was fun!! Friday night began with a little munching at the bbq bar with the Shane School gang - Sam, Duncan, Pascal and Martin. Of course Katie and I were there representing Hess (the superior school!). On the way there Katie and I were driving along on my bike when suddenly our eyes were shocked by a bright red fire in front of us!!! Not only a fire though... it seemed as if we'd driven near a KKK reunion on Yuanlin...

Luckily, we discovered later that it was merely a memorial service for someone (although I've never seen such a huge bonfire for that before!) and that in Taiwan they always wear white to a funeral.

After the bbq bar, we all headed to Changhua for a few drinks. Pascal recently bought himself a nifty little van, so we all hitched a ride with him instead of driving there on the bikes. Such fun!!! We headed to 'The Culture Club' and enjoyed an evening of chatting and listening to Andy play.

Stu looks like he's really enjoying this song!

Rachel and Duncan.

Pascal proudly driving his new van.

"Oh for a soft bed and not the hard floor in the back of this van"

Not sure what's happening here... I think Martin is trying to pick Katie's nose!

Lurking about not ready for bed yet...

After Friday night's evening out we decided that nothing would be better than a good meal and a movie... so off to Taichung we went. Martin, Sam, Duncan and I went to watch "The DaVinci Code" and eat yummy burgers. We also went to Nova (a big technical/computery store in Taichung) to help Sam buy a new laptop. While we were there I managed to find the exact digital camera I want to buy before I leave for China. Yay! It's the same model as the one I have now but the new fancy wonderful version. My lucky Dad gets my old one :)

On Sunday morning we got up early (again) and went hiking (again). But this time we were much more prepared!! Our friends Ross and Rea (from Changhua) came with us, as well as dear old Katie. We went to the same place as we did last weekend, but this time we brought sandwiches and crisps for a picnic on top of the mountain. What a fun day it was! Katie has just bought a new scooter and did a wonderful job of driving all around the local area without having any sort of whooopsie. The day was humid and hot but the hike was fun.

Group shot mid-way up the mountain.

Me and Martin.

Playing with colors...

The scary rope-holding part of the hike... so much easier going up!!!

Girls resting on park bench at the top!

Ross impressed us all with his manly moves on all the climbing equipment there was up there. (We came to the conclusion that Rea really did marry a monkey!!)

Pretty pink flower.

Me and Katie - full and happy after some good cheese and tomato sarmies.

On the way home we took the route through Nantou County, which is so beautiful - lots of tea fields (the smell as you drive past is incredible!), pineapple plantations and other things to see.

Hot pot, temples and hiking....

2006-05-16T15:35:00.000+08:00

I had the loveliest time last weekend... so relaxed and stress-free - just what I needed!! Last week I found myself getting totally wound up about the smallest things, crying at work, and generally not feeling on-top-of-the-world!! I guess I'm just anxious about leaving Taiwan next month and all that that entails...

On Saturday Martin and I lurked around inside all day (catching up because Martin had been away on holiday last week) until we finally ventured out to have an early hot pot dinner with some friends. We went to a local place, right next door to the school where I work.

Katie and Martin get some black tea to go with our meal.

Miranda, Ema and Katie enjoy the selection of sauces available.

Mmmmm.... yummy bacon (NOT!). Seriously - this is what most Taiwanese consider good bacon. Yuck!! If they could only see the stuff we get at home :)

Martie and Katie and Katie...

Ema, Sophia and Miranda enjoying their ice creams.

Poor Miranda had no idea what those foreigners were up to!

Buying fruit tea and milk tea at our local tea shop.

On Sunday Martin and I woke up early (a miracle indeed!!) and decided we would go on a biking adventure. Not really sure where we were going, but that didn't matter. It was an absolutely gorgeous day... sun shining, little puffy white clouds in the sky and a cool breeze!!

I'm ready for the ride...

First Martin took me to a temple on the mountain side that he used to visit sometimes. It's a lovely big temple overlooking the whole of Yuanlin and surrounding areas.

Martin at the front of the temple.

Where's Wally??

Me and Martin.

The temple man burning paper money for the ancestors.

Flower sculpture things...

After the fun at the temple, we headed off further south down the road. After a while we realized we were in Tienchung, and with a little more driving we discovered the "Tienchung Hiking Trail". A nice little walk would do us good we thought, so we parked the bike and headed off to see what we could see...

A nice little walk!!! We ended up hiking up the mountain side in the mid-day sun, me in my flip-flops and jeans and bright red in the face!! We did make it to the top though, and enjoyed the stunning views over the surrounding tea fields and little villages.

On the way down we came across a little hitch in the proceedings, we reached a place where you had to scale down the mountain side - there'd been a landslide and the steps were all washed away! The only way one could get down was by holding on to ropes and slowly descending. Martin wasn't too bad off with his long legs, but I must say I must have looked a sight!!! I got scared half-way down so ended up throwing my body against the rocks to save myself from falling down the mountain!!! When I eventually reached the bottom I was covered in sweat and dirt and had burning hands from the ropes!! As if that wasn't bad enough, we later bumped into a student of mine hiking with her family... Martin had no t-shirt on, I was covered in grime and generally looking rather rough... and we had to endure a little polite chat with them before we could move on!!!

My cool shot of this weird insect I discovered (half butterfly, half bee or something!)

Martin prepares himself to climb some more...

I've reached a flat bit - yay!!

The view across the valley to the part of the trail that we hiked up...

Why did we go on this hiking trail again???

The top part of this picture is the area where you have to sort-of absail down... we later discovered that most people climb UP this side to avoid having to go down holding on to ropes!!! (good to know!)

Baseball!!

2006-05-13T13:39:00.000+08:00

A few weekends ago, Martin surprised me with a trip to a baseball game for our anniversary. I'd never seen a real game before and so I was super excited!!
We drove to Douliou, where they have a brand new baseball stadium - very fancy it was indeed! We watched The Elephants (Douliou's local team) play The Whales, and joined in enthusiastically with all the cheering, yelling and yellow-plastic banging things! I didn't really have any clue as to how the game went, so every now and again I found myself cheering for what I thought was a really good hit by our team... only to be given sideways glances and disapproving looks from the hard-core Elephants fans!!! Oops. Luckily I did eventually get the gist of it all!

After the baseball, we drove around Douliou for a while looking for somewhere to forage... and lo and behold... we found Somewhere Beer...

All in all, I had a wonderful evening with Martin - what a lucky girl I am :)

And they're off... The Elephants vs. The Whales!!

I try out my hand at banging the yellow things... and I like it!

My hero of the hour... Man of the match... No. 23!!

This cheerleading lady kept us going through all the innings!!

We're excited!

The pitch through the wire.

Snacks keep us going and I feel like a child all over again... yummy HOOLA HOOPS!!!

This is the gang of cheerleaders that were just amazing!

The yellow blur is burning my eyes!!

Don't I look superimposed?

The triumphant team says thanks to the cheering crowds!!

And there it is: Douliou Baseball Stadium

Lovely name for a bar...

Ji Ji and Shueili... snake kilns, sweating, sunflowers and more...

2006-05-06T00:59:00.000+08:00

A few weekends ago, Miranda and her boyfriend Chris took Martin, Katie and I out on a Taiwanese adventure!!! Much to the foreigners disgust we were told that we had to be at the train station by 9am or we would waste half the day... we did manage to get up in time but there were some grumpy bodies on that train I can tell you.

But we perked up by the time we got to Shueili (a town in the mountains that we've travelled to loads on the scooter but never by train - didn't even realise it was such a short trip!) and were positively jovial when we went to hire bicycles for the morning. Our festive feelings were short-lived however, as we soon found ourselves struggling up the mountain under the baking sun. We arrived at the snake kiln all hot and sticky and me (as is custom) bright red in the face!!!

The snake kiln is named so because it is very long and snake-like. Oh I don't know... something like that. We immediately bought some ice cream and had a lovely wander around the area.

Me, Martin, Miranda and Chris outside the kiln.

It really is rather long...

Miranda and Chris enjoying their well-deserved ice creams.

Martin and I totally look like Patrick and Demi don't we??

Cool statue man with his snake...

Look at me oh so little...

Martin inside one of the smaller kilns... we were wondering exactly how you'd bake a full grown man in there?!

The gang :)

Katie really liked this weird sculpture thing... I'm still not too sure exactly what it's supposed to be.

Pretty pottery...

Once we'd had our fill of pottery, we made our way back down the mountain to return our bikes and get back on the train for more adventure... it was SO much more fun cycling down that mountain that attempting to ride up it!!

Waiting at the little sleepy train station in Shueili just became too much for me... so I decided to jump onto the tracks and entertain the masses!!! My dearest Lorraine will remember this pose oh too well :)

After the fun photo opportunity Martin jumped down to persuade me to get off the tracks before someone official came and told me off for being a crazy foreigner...

Miranda and Chris wait patiently for the train.

From Shueili we took the train to JiJi - what we thought was going to be another little mountain town. What a shock we got when we got off the little train... it was like a crazy night market there!!! There were just so many people there, all shopping or wandering around or taking pictures. We decided we definately had to get out into the countryside asap. So after a quick bite to eat in a wierdly smelly restaurant, we went off to hire bikes again for another afternoon ride. I was feeling rather rough at the time, either from a fast-acting bug from the noodles I ate, or because I hadn't eaten anything all day up until that point - so I wimped out and hired an electric scooter thing. It was so great!!! Didn't go much over 25 km/h but it was fun to drive!!!

In Jiji we drove around to a lovely looking school with a pretty temple beside it, we took at look at one of the biggest temples there that had been devastated by the September 1999 earthquake, and we went sunflower shopping at one of the little farms on the side of the road.

Posing at the school's temple.

Miranda and Katie try to look all cute by the cool picture...

Collapsed temple.

Miranda with crazy hair riding on her bike.

Another view...

Sunflower fields are so pretty.

Something about Koi fish fascinates me... not too sure what though.

Yellow is totally our color darling!!

Me and Martin

And this officially has to be the best picture of the lot... so I've saved it till last. On the train home we discovered the meaning of chinkalicious clothing/accessories... this man probably had NO idea what his shoes meant...

random days...

2006-05-04T16:17:00.000+08:00

Thought I'd fill you all in on some random stuff I've been doing lately... none of these pictures are related really so I thought I'd just mush them all together in a big bunch!!

TAICHUNG WITH MIRANDA AND KATIE...

One Saturday after school, while Martin and his brother were still galavanting around Taiwan, the three of us decided to have a girly day out and go to Taichung for the evening. We took a train there and then, on Miranda's advice, took the bus into town!! Never will I take the bus again... yes, it did only cost NT20 (about 0.33pence) but it was SO slow and frustrating! Katie and I decided that the foreigners way was better - just take a damn taxi!!! We took Miranda to one of my favorite foreign food places (Finga's) to show her how delicious sandwiches really can be. Guess what?? She didn't really like it!! Said she liked her sandwiches the Taiwanese way - sweet fillings and milk bread. What a shame.

Cereal anyone?

I've definately eaten enough!

Could innocent little Miranda possibly be showing us a rude finger???

EASTER PARTY IN CHANGHUA...

Over the Easter weekend we were invited to a day of feasting at Stu and Yani's house in Changhua. We had a lovely day of, well... feasting! And dancing and chatting and generally just chilling out. We also had a big watermelon weighing competition - the winner number being 14kg!!

KiwiKate is turned into a food sculpture.

Andy drains the dregs.

Stu loves his new hat!

Rea looking lovely on the balcony.

Our American friend can be camera-shy at times.

MEETING DUNCAN...

There is a new teacher at Martin's school, who just arrived in Taiwan a few weeks ago. On his first Friday night in town Martin, Katie and I took him to Burts bar where we entertained him with our delightful conversation and tales of what his new life will bring him...

Martin and Duncan

Me.

I'm not sure Duncan's convinced about the fact that Chinese people really do eat EVERY single part of a chicken!

The hands... the hands they will get you!!!

THE AFTERNOON AFTER THE NIGHT BEFORE...

After a 4:30am bedtime the night before and poor Katie having to get up at 7am to teach all day, we decided that all we needed on Saturday afternoon was some good Western food and a movie. We didn't quite get a movie watched but we did enjoy some great food at Chilli's in Tiger City. We were also entertained by some bizarre exercise marathon that was going on outside Tiger City... we're not really sure what it was for but it was fun to watch!!

Mass crowds exercising... not something you see everday!

These kung-fu boys were quite funky!

Martin and Katie can't resist hugging the giant bear.

Nice to know you're almost home.

The three muskateers.

I have the best boyfriend!

2006-05-02T18:05:00.000+08:00

Prepare yourself for some chinkalicious viewing...

Could this watch be any cheesier??? Only in Taiwan could one find such a gem!!! But I must admit... I love it :)

a bit of a holiday....

2006-04-28T13:22:00.000+08:00

Here are some pictures from a bit of traveling we did recently. Martin's brother, Pete, came to visit us from England for 10 days and we spent many a jolly hour showing him around Taiwan and sharing our lives here with him.

Pete's holiday in Taiwan started a little badly as I was sick with "acute gastroenteritis" the day he arrived. I perked up a little on Sunday, so instead of starting the epic journey around Taiwan as Martin had planned, we jetted off to Lukang for the day. Lukang is a beautiful little town filled with lots of old temples and cool lantern shops. We were really lucky this day as we managed to see a ceremony at the Matsu temple in central Lukang... lots of dragon dances, self-flagellation and dancing!

Pretty lanterns hanging in the streets.

Kate and Katie at the Matsu temple.

The head of the dragon.

The big men who guard the doors to the temple.

This man walked over a line of firecrackers while whipping his own back.

Once back in Yuanlin, we took Pete to our local foreign hangout - The Maple Leafs. We should have been introducing him to all the local delicacies but quite frankly, we were just too hungry and too tired!!

Me and Martin at Neills.

After enjoying some good hamburgers, bagels and fries we headed to the night market. I think Pete really enjoyed foraging around there... the boys played a baseball-throwing game (which they both sucked at!!), Martin tried his hand at a Chinese game that we didn't really know how to play, and we made friends with a cool guy who had a Thai-looking stall full of clothes and other trinkets.

Trying out the Chinese game.

Night market street.

The boys search for cool stickers... but I'm more interested in the camera!

When Monday morning came around I was feeling a bit better but somehow poor Martin had caught my dreaded lurgy!! So we had to postpone the trip for another day...
Luckily by Tuesday we were both feeling much better and up for anything so we all headed off for Sun Moon Lake.

Are we there yet? (I get bored in the front seat and start to entertain myself by taking funny pictures!)

Martin and the Katies beside the lake.

There is a lovely big temple along Sun Moon Lake called Wen Wu Temple. This temple is a shrine to both Confucianism and Taoism religions. From the top of the temple you can enjoy views of the whole lake.

One of the big dragon guards of the temple.

Striking a pose outside the Wen Wu temple.

Kissing a dragon.

The view from the top of the temple.

Pete gets excited about the giant apple he's having for dinner.

After spending most of the day at Sun Moon Lake we drove to Dongpu for the night. Dongpu is a particular favorite of mine and Martins as it is basically a hot spring town. We always stay at the same hotel - the views of the mountains are gorgeous and you get a big natural jacuzzi in your hotel room!!! Nice.

First thing we do... jump into the bath and play with bubbles!!

I'm enticing him in...

Breakfast the next morning.

Martin excells at his Timotei shampoo advert!

Pete's so sexy he turns the water hot...

Group shot!

Preparing for the next leg of the trip.

Katie on the bridge in Dongpu.

Beautiful views... (and I don't just mean Katie!)

From Dongpu we drove to Tatachia to watch the sunset. Last time Martin and I went there we were on the scooter and it was freezing cold!! It was a lot more pleasant this time round and we even got there a little early so managed to see the visitor center and have some food too.

Poor little British boy got rather sunburnt!

Dudes.

And I would walk 500 miles...

We have a picnic of beer and watch the sunset.

Lovely sunset.

After the sunset in Tatachia, we drove through to Alishan to stay the night. We had some lovely food (even though we're not sure how we ordered half of it... bit of a menu mix-up!) and then it was back to the hotel to get some sleep before the great 4am wake up call! We had another mix up the next morning as the hotel didn't call us as they usually do to wake us up. Luckily we had also set an alarm... but it was set 30 minutes later than it should have been and we almost missed the train up the mountain!! Luckily, Martin the hero, ran up ahead and made them wait for us!

The little convenient store is really tiny! Martin and Katie had fun showing off how tall they are.

Martin at sunrise.

The cherry blossoms.

After spending the morning walking down the mountain and enjoying the trees, we had to drive to Chiayi. Katie and I had to be at school teaching that same evening so it was a bit of a rush to the train station. We were very jealous as we left the boys to continue their journey around Taiwan. And I must say that I'm not sure my students got the best of me that night... but after waking up at 4am - what do they expect!!!

Martin and Pete arrived back in Yuanlin on the Sunday before Pete had to leave, so we decided to pack his last few days with lots of meals out and things... we took him up the mountain behind Yuanlin to see the view of the city at night, to various eateries and some local Taiwanese bars.

The brothers on top of the mountain.

I'm an alien!

Pete got rather hungry on top of the mountain...

At the Japanese bbq restaurant where you can order as much of anything as you like and you have to cook it yourself!

At a local bar having a few drinks.

We had a wonderful time with Pete here, and Martin really enjoyed the brotherly bonding time. Thanks for coming... we miss you Pete!!

Tung-hsiau Ocean Park (again!)

2006-04-17T12:15:00.000+08:00

Here are some pictures from another weekend we spent at Tung-hsiau Ocean Park... but this time we took our friend Katie with us and stayed there for two days. The weather was pretty awful but we entertained ourselves with bubblegum and travel scrabble!!

We had a rather eventful walk from the train station to the park on Saturday evening, as it was wet, windy and muddy. We had to roll up our jeans and manoeuver our way across dangerous scaffolding and big puddles!!

Martin and Katie edging their way across the marshlands...

Martin's best bubble!

I'm not very good at this game.

The three of us preparing for our sumptuous seafood supper!

And this is all we left!

Mosquitos beware!!

Cheesy Martin (this is why he never smiles with his teeth!!)

Driving our little buggy around.

Katie and her new pet.

The camping area.

Through the looking glass.

This little fishy was really enjoying snuggling in its little home.

My favorite - the giant fish.

Yo Yo Yo Wassup???

Katie making another friend.

Which one's my boyfriend?

Many an hour was spent playing long jump in the sand...

St. Patrick's Day Party

2006-03-19T22:40:00.000+08:00

Last Friday night there was a St. Patrick's Day party at our local bar - The Maple Leaf. Martin and I decided to take Katie (the new teacher at my branch) out for a meal and a quiet drink or two...

Me and him.

Pudding arrives... but most of it ends up on Martin's face.

Green Richard!

Who's that??

Rich and Katie discovering new functions on her camera.

"Even little guppies don't smile!"

Kate and Katie :)

Chinese Martin.

Gail enjoying her night off work!

Pascal: back in Taiwan but still can't figure out how Chinese cigarettes work!

Sam - the new teacher working with Martin at Shane school.

And then we played a little game... someone said a phrase and you had to manouver your face into that expression!

"The stinky tofu smell just wafted in the room"

"One of your students just vomited on your feet!"

"You are totally shocked at something but try to smile and hide it"

Neill then brought out the shooters.

Mandy.

Sillyness.

Shane School Spring Festival 2006

2006-03-18T22:39:00.000+08:00

A few weeks ago Martin's school put on their Spring Festival show in Yuanlin. I helped Martin write the script for his class' performance of "The Little Mermaid" months ago, so was excited to see them actually perform it.

It was a night of watching lots of gorgeous little children performing fun little plays and songs... all the while attempting not to get too broody!!!

Stu's little Oompa Loompas from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"

Teacher Rea in "The Majic Jungle Cupboard".

I just loved these little ducks!

Martin's little narrators for "The Little Mermaid".

Flounder the fish.

Undeniably the best costume that night... Sebastian the crab!

Ariel visits Ursula the sea witch.

The anxious teacher watches on from the sidelines...

On the wedding ship - King Triton blesses Ariel and Prince Eric.

Watching "The Wizard of Oz" took me back to my high school performance of Dorothy!

The Changhua Shane teachers show...

Teacher Rachel means business.

All the boys in a row.

Tung-hsiau Ocean Park

2006-03-03T16:57:00.000+08:00

A few weeks ago Martin and I found ourselves on a fairly warm Sunday afternoon with nothing to do... so we randomly picked a spot just north of Taichung to visit for the day. It turned out to be quite an adventure at the Tung-hsiau Ocean Park - we saw lots of different kinds of fish and other aquatic beings, drove around on a funky pedal-car thing, took a stroll on the beach and made friends with the farm yard animals. Lovely.

Me on the beach.

Me and Martin.

Big pollution poles that have been decorated with some funky sea-life pictures.

Martin should never have let me take control of the steering wheel...

Signs are not always this obvious in Taiwan.

My turtle friend.

The two headed goat is quite an attraction here...

Thailand!!

2006-02-10T15:47:00.000+08:00

Finally they are here! Some pictures from our trip to Thailand last week over Chinese New Year. We left on Saturday night (Jan 28th) and flew to Bangkok. We opted for the cheapest accomodation choice for that night... sleeping on the chairs in the airport - oh so comfy! The next morning we caught our internal flight out to Koh Samui (one of the biggest islands in Thailand). Once in Koh Samui, we had to take a boat across to Koh Phangan, which took about an hour. Our friends Tom and Grainne had been before and recommended a lovely resort on the north part of the island... Baan Panburi Village. Oh my!!! Deliciously gorgeous and right on the beach, we loved it!

Most of the week was spent lounging around on the beach, swimming, reading books, playing cards and Scrabble, getting Thai massages and eating lovely Thai food. Can't complain about that now can we???

We did eventually get off our butts and out of our hammock on the last day we were there, and took a bumpy "taxi" ride over to the north eastern side of Koh Phangan island. We went to Mae Had beach right near Koh Ma (a very small island that has great snorkeling and diving spots!) and spent the day there.

The most eventful part of our trip came when we decided to take a boat back to our beach, instead of the taxi along the road. We got in the boat each with an icecream in hand, and settled back for a nice little ride. But the ocean had other plans for us.... after about 30 minutes on the water, we suddenly realised how big the waves were getting (please bear in mind that we were in a very little Thai taxi boat with only a small engine to keep us going). But we trusted the old boat man so didn't think too much of it. After another 5 minutes though, we did start to get worried as the waves were getting bigger and bigger and the man driving the boat had started muttering to himself and looked nervous! Yikes! By now I was feeling really scared and a bit sea sick!! Luckily though, it all turned out ok, as the man turned the boat around and headed back the way we came saying "safety first"! Thank goodness for that! Once we got back to Mae Had beach the man got us in his truck and drove us back to Baan Panburi.

And then the next day the horrible moment of having to leave was upon us... we headed back to Koh Samui for one night and got on our flight back to Bangkok the next morning at 6am! We arrived back in Taiwan on Saturday (Feb 4th) night. And that was that.

Here's me trying to find the way to the internal flight departure zone in Bangkok.

We've arrived in Koh Samui!

Martin waiting for our luggage - the most rustic looking terminal I've ever been too.

In the taxi on the way to our boat from Koh Samui to Koh Phangan.

And here I am on the boat.

This was our little hut for the week, simple and gorgeous!

The view from our hut to the beach... only 10 seconds away!

Me on the stoep of our hut, first day we arrived.

The restaurant was right on the beach front.

This little puppy stole most of the tourists' hearts!

First day... we hit the beach!

Coconuts were all around...

Our first dinner at the restaurant.

I think Martin's getting a little too involved in the book he's reading ("Memoirs of a Geisha")

The hammock we bought and hung up outside our hut.

This is how I wooed Martin!!

My banana pancake breakfast takes on another form...

This morning we arose early and got a swim in before breakfast.

How I love the beach...

Martin's skin is now silky smooth and smells of aloe.

Our restaurant at night.

And then one day it rained....

Clouds rolling in...

Chairs stacked outside.

Rainy palm leaves.

What do you do when it rains??? Get a Thai massage! This is the view from the massage house... nice!

We got bored...

And then a bit silly...

Last day of adventures and we're off in a truck to Koh Ma Island. (Most of the roads were much worse than this dirt track)

Martin shows off the island's foliage on the way...

Cool sky.

Bobbing around on the back of the truck.

Martin in front of Koh Ma Island.

Thai man on the front of the boat which caused all the trouble!

Martin braves the splashing waves for this picture!

Hey Tom - recognise this hat???

Almost home time and Martin is waiting for our Catamaran back to Koh Samui.

I'm getting in lots of practice for our future backpacking trip around China!!

Local fishermen leaving the docks.

We did this a lot... our last night on Koh Samui Island.

Big Buddha Apartments - we walked from here to the airport the next morning at 6am.

Our new hobby.

2006-02-07T13:37:00.000+08:00

Martin and I decided about a month ago that we needed a new hobby. We always watch movies, read books, play board games etc... but it was time for a change! So one night, we headed out on the scooter scanning the Yuanlin streets for some other form of entertainment - and here it is! Pool.

It's a nice place, not too crowded and smoke-y!

I'm kicking some boyfriend butt over here!

Martin needs to have a few beers to commiserate over his losses... and then he doesn't feel too bad.

Kenting holiday!

2006-01-22T17:30:00.000+08:00

Two weeks ago Martin and I took a few days off work and headed down to Kenting for a 5 day long-weekend (our first proper holiday since returning from home last June!). We had the most wonderful time just relaxing and reading books and eating nice food!

We'd booked a nice hotel before we arrived, but quickly had to rearrange that plan.... as soon as we got to it we realised we'd run into a little problem. On either side of the hotel was some very annoying, very loud construction work!!! Although the hotel owners tried to convince us that they would stop over the weekend, we weren't convinced and managed to bargain our way out of there. We found a smaller and cheaper hotel, which suited us just fine!!

Most days we just lounged around on the beaches or spent time driving along the coastline on our hired scooter seeing the sights. We spent quite a few hours sampling the excellent Thai and Indian cuisine on offer, often followed with a bit of Turkish ice cream for pudding!

Noisy neighboring construction work drives us away.

Martin's smile disguises the frustration he's feeling!

The view we left behind when moving hotel.

Martin strolling along the beach.

The 'arty white-light picture'

Sticks and sand.

A wierd four-legged monster passed us on the beach...

Leaping with joy :)

The spider in his lair.... (too lazy to catch anything this afternoon)

Warung Didi - a funky Thai restaurant we frequented this holiday.

At "Sail Rock" - along the coastline south of Kenting.

Well..... it's called 'Kissing Rock' ok???

I am the monster that lurks in the cave.

Martin in Eluanbi park.

I'm just part of the foliage.

Cheesy boy with the lighthouse.

Wow! Its the southern most tip of Taiwan!

Martin and his cool new helmet are ready for the off....

On the east coast now - and its rather windy!!!

We found this cool old suspension bridge along the way.

Taiwan Martin and the hill we couldn't find.

Martin gets bored and starts to play...

Yay for being on holiday!

Our last day, and we stop for a game of Scrabble on the beach.

Lovely sunset.

I think the bus home freaked him out a little...

Happy New Year!

2006-01-22T17:29:00.000+08:00

One of my Christmas pressies from Martin was a night at the new Spa Motel in Yuanlin. We decided it would be perfect to spend New Years there, away from all the people and the pressures of 'having a good party'!!
We had a really wonderful time, just enjoying each others company and the two TVs!!!

The lovely sunset over Yuanlin - last day of 2005!

Fancy bed in the Spa Motel.

Martin showing off the nice jacuzzi.

The view from the jacuzzi - my favourite feature.

Christmas Time!

2006-01-22T17:28:00.000+08:00

Christmas was a fairly quiet affair over on this side of the world - mainly just me and Martin together. But we had a lovely weekend despite being so far away from all our family and friends. We just lazed around the house together and enjoyed the cool, but sunny, weather Taiwan had to offer.

On Christmas Eve we took a drive up the mountain behind our little city to take advantage of the sunshine, and after our little picnic up there we headed home for supper and Scrabble.

Christmas day was spent opening pressies (this took a while - thanks everyone!!) and then at about 3:30pm we popped over to our friends Jennie and Melody's house for a nice big fat Christmas meal. The ladies had prepared a delicious culinary feast of roast ham, sausages, potatoes, veggies and all sorts... yum!!

Our pretty lanterns make for a lovely Chinese-y atmosphere in our house.
'

Oooooh we like presents!

Our little Christmas tree.

Christmas Eve - and we're up the mountain!

Playing in the kids area on the mountain viewing spot.

Martin's a bit big for it all.

On the way down the mountain, we stopped to check out the view.

A tea plantation (we think!).

The triumphant winner!

Christmas morning, and Santa's ready to open pressies!

Jennie getting excited about Christmas!

Jennie and Melody's apartment full of people.

Melody and Martin enjoying Christmas festivities!

Amber with her Dad, enjoying the attention.

Say Cheese everyone!

Hilarious homework!

2005-12-13T15:07:00.000+08:00

Last night, after waiting for 3 weeks or more, I finally got an essay back from one of my PG (postgraduate) students. The topic was "Why Wearing School Uniforms is a Bad Idea"... clearly this student had miscalculated slightly however, as he handed in this:

For those of you who can't read it, I shall transcribe. I laughed so hard last night that I just had to share it with you all.

"Wearing Fur Clothes is Bad"
Wearing fur clothes is wrong because it is wearing for the bady. if the fur on your bady, than you so itch. If you so itch, and you to slutch here. and there are blood on your derm.

where are the fur? It is for the animal! animal for not the give to the people fur, and people will kill animals and pluck the fur, and carrying to the clothes to make a "Fur Clothes".

etc etc....

Time in Tainan.

2005-12-07T20:59:00.000+08:00

After having decided that we'd had enough of driving the scooter for miles and miles every weekend, Martin and I took the train down to Tainan for a cultural weekend of temples and travel books.

We arrived quite late on Saturday night, quickly found a cheap hotel near the train station and set out for what we hoped would be a lovely Western meal at the Greenhouse restaurant - recommended by our Lonely Planet book. Not again will we go there however... we had to walk up 3 flights of dodgy metal stairs and the meal wasn't Western, it was more like Chinese/Western. Ok but not what we were looking for.

After supper we wandered around the city, saw some temples and enjoyed the park near the Confucious temple. Tainan is really a pretty city - lots of trees and greenery everywhere (quite different from Yuanlin).

We spent most of Sunday morning enjoying the Caves Bookshop, which was right next door to our hotel. We sat at the coffee shop there and read newspapers and books for hours. Lovely. (We also found a big "Let's Go China" - plans for travel next year are hotting up)

Later on Sunday we found the Matsu temple and did some more wandering. We ended the day with a delicious meal at an Austrian/German restaurant (this time we weren't disappointed with our Lonely Planet book's suggestion!)

Martin wiles away the time at the Greenhouse restaurant before pudding arrives.

These are the stairs we had to walk up to get to the restaurant - not fun!

The smile disguises the fear he feels trying to negotiate the stairs.

Can you see how high up we are?

One of the many temples we saw that weekend.

Martin strikes his sexy temple pose.

Well, it is the Year of the Rooster after all!

A cool big tree.

Cute old couple walking down a festive looking street.

Taiwanese Kate with guard dogs (according to feng shui, these wierd looking lion/dogs guard and protect your house or property).

Pretty trees in the park surrounding the Confucious temple.

Sexy boyfriend.

Cool shadows in the park.

Cute aren't we??

OK maybe not.

Sunday afternoon, and I'm reading all about the oldest Confucious temple in Taiwan.

And here it is....

I like dragons.

Martin outside the Matsu temple later on that day...

And I'm upstairs.

Smile!

On the balcony of the Matsu temple.

Martin really really likes my green handbag (mmmm...??)

Sunday night, eating a lovely Austrain meal before taking the train home.

Home James...

Lately...

2005-11-30T20:53:00.000+08:00

Here are some pics from various things that I've been doing lately.

First up: Chinese lessons!! I'm back to being a student and really enjoying it. The only problem is that the lessons are in Taichung and that means getting up at 6am on Monday and Thursday morning to catch the train! Yuck... (for those of you who are saying to yourselves "oh I get up at that time every morning, what's the problem?", please let me just say that I do have to work until after 9pm every night!!)

Next is our little trip to Lukang. Martin and I drove through last Saturday to do some shopping and see the sights. We ordered this beautiful lantern from one of the famous lantern shops there - we had our Chinese names hand painted on either side of it...

And finally, last weekend Rob, Adele, Martin and I took the train down to Chiayi for a late Sunday afternoon meal at the British pub. Yum yum.

I'm a student again!

Martin hard at work...

Pretty isn't it?

Kate

Martin

Martin on the sardine-packed train - no seats for an hour and a half!

Rob and Adele looking sexy...

Martin tries South African boerewors!

Read this!

2005-11-29T22:38:00.000+08:00

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdaenig. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mind! Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in what order the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat tteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig eh

P.S. Thanks Joan!

Motorcyle madness!

2005-11-22T22:31:00.000+08:00

Last weekend Martin and I finally got ourselves out of Yuanlin and into the mountains. We decided to try a new destination this time - Tatachia. Famous for its wonderful mountain hikes and spectacular sunrises and sunsets, we thought it'd be a great place to go after spending so many weekends in the city.

We began our journey on Saturday afternoon (with a stop in Dongpu for lunch), bracing ourselves for a good few hours on the bike. It took rather a lot more than a good few hours though, and as we drove up and up the mountain side and the wind got colder and colder, there were several moments when I asked myself "are you two stark raving mad??" In parts of the journey we were the only people on the road and it was truly scary. We were driving through the clouds and mist and I was so cold I could barely feel my own body.

We did eventually reach Tatachia though... only to be told by some hardy mountaineers that all the huts there were reserved for them, and in order to have a bed to sleep in we would have to drive another 20km to Alishan - more driving?? Help!
Luckily for us, the lovely Taiwanese didn't let us go without first giving us some hot soup to warm us up a little. And we had the added bonus of catching the sunset just as we got to Tatachia, which was gorgeous. I've never seen the sky in Taiwan turn such amazing colors!!

Then it was back on the bike and off again into the clouds. But this time I knew what awaited me.... a hot bath and warm bed!!! Lovely. We got to Alishan, checked into the hotel and that was that. I needed nothing more than that bath.

Sunday morning we were woken up by the 4am hotel call. Up we got and off we went to catch the mountain train with the rest of the Taiwanese all eagerly anticipating the sunrise. It was a long wait and when the sun eventually rose at 6:40am, it wasn't as spectacular as the last time I was in Alishan - but still beautiful.

By that afternoon we were back on the bike and heading back to Yuanlin. We stopped in Chiayi for some good old British food in the local pub, watched a little South African satellite tv and then, very tired and very full, drove the last bit home. We collapsed into bed at about 7:30 and that was that... a weekend well spent!

First stop - lunch in Dongpu... appetizing isn't it???

Freezing cold sunset in Tatachia.

The colors were magical.

The first time that I've welcomed the taste of fish balls and watery soup in Taiwan!!

Martin gets some warmth-giving soup in him!

Finally we arrive in Alishan, where a kettle and a nice warm hotel bed awaits... (Ok so 6.4 doesn't seem that cold, but when you've been riding on a bike at 2600m above sea level after sundown - believe me it's freezing!)

Martin waits in line for a greasy 'dan-bing' (fried-egg-pancake-thing) at 4:30am.

Waiting for the sunrise...

I try Martin's glasses for size and am surprised at how well I can see with them on (ooops - a trip to the optometrist might be in order!).

He tries to entertain me to pass the time...

Hundreds of Taiwanese waiting for the sunrise.

The sun has risen... happy smiles all around!

We rode halfway down the mountain and walked the other half (honest!).

Cool bamboo on the side of the road.

The further down the mountain we go, the hotter I get... need to take off some layers!

My new boyfriend "Chuck" on the 'famous lover's bridge' somewhere on the road west of Alishan.

Sunset over Chiayi city along the way home.

Rich and Mon's Bye Bye Bash

2005-11-13T14:17:00.000+08:00

Last night, Martin and I drove through to Changhua for Rich and Monica's farewell. We started the evening with some food at China City, then moved on to various bars around town, and ended up at Stu's house till a good 6:30am today! Needless to say, a good time was had by all.

Ross, Andy and Rea in the bar.

I start the evening of with a vodka and orange juice - yum!

Tequilla!

Aaargh where's the lemon???

Me and Camy.

Jez shows us his best impression of a puffer fish!

Stu shows off his barman skills...

Lucky me gets a smackeroo from famous Andy.

Martin poses for his new friends.

We move bars... and Rea shows off her talent of winning every single "paper-scissor-stone" game - ever!

Rich tries again... in vain.

She laughs the laugh of victory!

Martin tries to be sexy.

By the end of the night, Martin finds the tv more interesting than any of us.

Killer the Fish.

2005-11-08T12:01:00.000+08:00

Here is our fish that we adopted from Tom and Grainne when they left these lands.

His name is Killer - it is heard tell in these parts that no other fish can survive in his tank....

He searches for prey...

We cleaned his tank last weekend, a very happy fish.

Home.

This one I wanted to add because it shows off our new blind again! Martin took this the other day - we liked the light filtering in...

DIY Martin!

2005-11-01T11:39:00.000+08:00

Last weekend we finally got down to business with sorting out our little apartment once and for all. Floors were cleaned, photo frames were filled and put up and all that was left for late Sunday afternoon was the menial little task of putting up the blind in the bedroom. Or so we thought....

We'd borrowed Rob and Adele's drill for the task, measured the distances required thrice over and were ready! But what happened? Something went horribly wrong....

Somehow we'd miscalculated distances and Martin was left getting thoroughly frustrated with the drill, the drill bits, the screws, the wall - just about anything really!!

But the good news is he managed it in the end... and now we have a beautiful blind to keep out the sun!!!

He gets ready with Rob's manly power drill...

The pose.

One successful drillage and screwage.

One "not-so-successful-how-on-earth-did-we-measure-it-wrong?" drillage.

Success!! He can hardly believe his eyes...

The Shane School Halloween Show!

2005-10-30T17:42:00.000+08:00

Last night I played the part of the dutiful girlfriend, and went along to Martin's school's Halloween Show in Changhua. All the teachers from the Changhua school had to put on a production with their students. I was wholly impressed with some of the students' level of English - little 7 year old King Arthur being my favorite!

It was a long night... but the real fun came right at the end, when I got to watch Martin and the other teachers from the Yuanlin school put on a little dance number of their own... hilarious - both the dance moves and the muck-ups!!

Andy starts off the night with a little music.

I can see clearly now the rain has gone...

Martin, Andre and Pascal compare notes for the judging of the Halloween costumes competition.

Little King Arthur (who stole my heart!).

The other broody moment of my evening came when this little chap (Stanley, the son of one of the Changhua teachers) decided he was going to steal the show and wander all over the stage in the middle of some speeches!

I love the big inflatable pumpkins.

Pascal ("the dance instructor") starts them all off.

Jennie dancing with gusto!

Melody busts some moves as Martin blows his nose in the background.

Andre's not quite sure what to do next...

Well, thank goodness that's over!!

Stray cat services!

2005-10-29T12:38:00.000+08:00

Last night, as is often the case these days, Martin and I hung around outside his school discussing dinner.

As we were pondering the ever-frustrating question of where to ruminate at 10pm at night, we saw a gorgeous little street kitten trying to fight with the Shane school dustbin for an evening snack.

Martin - not heeding my cries of "let's take him home and love him" - took the more sensible path and quickly popped off to 7/11 to buy 3 tins of tuna... what a happy little kitty he was then :)

He sees me, and waits.

But the delectable rubbish smells overpower him and he gets in there...

Where is the damn food now then?

Ooops, how did I lose my lid?

Yes! Food!

This is one happy (and soon to be fat) cat.

Martin survives acupuncture!

2005-10-27T13:57:00.000+08:00

Last week, after spending hours cleaning and mopping our old apartment (a very manly, macho way to go...), Martin managed to pull a muscle in his back rather badly.

Not quite knowing what to do with my incapacitated boyfriend, I phoned my friend Emily whose father is a well-reputed Chinese doctor in the area. She and her family were wonderful in helping us out, especially considering it was on a Sunday!

She picked us up and drove us over to her house in Huatan where her father got straight down to business. Needles came out and body parts were punctured. OW!!!
This carried on each morning for the rest of the week - and now he's healthy and able-bodied once more. Amazing (not that I'd try it!).

He smiles the smile of someone who knows nothing of what's about to happen...

Aaaand... they're in!

Ooooh so painful!

Worse than getting a tattoo? I don't even want to find out!

Emily's cute dog Harry isn't interested... he's seen this too many times.

After 20 minutes of poking, prodding and pushing... they finally come out!

The medicine cabinet. Mostly full of various dried herbs and plant matter... but there were a few surprises for me when I opened drawers to take a peek - crusty dried scorpians, leeches, earth worms etc... - fancy some herbal tea???

Ooops missed one!

2005-10-26T23:38:00.000+08:00

Here are some pictures from a rather long time ago that I somehow missed when I was updating my blog the last time round.

It was in August or September I think... a whole bunch of us from Yuanlin and Changhua headed down to Camy's parents house, just south of Kaohsiung, for the weekend. We had a wonderful time there, enjoying lots of driving around on scooters and finding waterfalls (after hours of searching in the pouring rain! - fun honest!).

Rich enjoys his greasy-fried-bbq-duck-meal-thing.

Stu gets up close and personal.

Stu looking cool in his Chinese rice paddy hat.

Arty shot of tree with some town in Ping-tung county in background.

Tom shows us all his party trick.

Jez takes a closer look....

Whooopeeee... crazy waterfall!!

Another cool watery shot.

Tom and I enjoy a little relaxation in the rapids...

Woah... I'm washed away by the mighty wave.

"I can see right up your shorts from here Tom! - what is that???"

Camy and I enjoy the sun trickling through the trees.

Vrooom... vrooom.... look how fast we can go!

The happy gang eating beef noodles.

Monica's so speedy she needs her big fat red helmet for this one.

Andy shows us how its really done.

We fly the flag of victory!

Hong Kong!

2005-10-18T15:49:00.000+08:00

2 weeks ago Taiwan had a public holiday on a Monday (10/10), so Martin and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to pop over to Hong Kong for a long weekend. We'd been meaning to go ever since March, so it was high time we did.

I had a wonderful time - despite having a bit of a tummy bug the first night we were there. We found the city very relaxing and even managed to stay well away from the shops (which is surprisingly easy when you have no money!!!). We spent most of our time just wandering around enjoying the sights and eating lovely food.

One of the best things about it was that everyone spoke English and if you needed a little taste of Britain there was lots to be found - we spent most of our pennies on Mars bars!!!

2005-10-18T15:46:00.001+08:00

First stop - British pub.