Sunday, 14 September 2008
Monday, 25 August 2008
the Whore of the Orient
We love Shanghi. Its crazy, it makes the rest of China seem provincial and backward. While the rest of China's history stretches back over 2 millenia, Shanghai's is compressed into about a century, from the opium wars and the British concessions to the Japanese invasion, the rise of communism and the more recent rise of the huge skyscrapers. There are 20 million people living here and that gives it the palpable sence that there's things happening.
We've spent our last few days living 2 lives. We're staying in a youth hostel in the cheap end of town and have most of our meals down the market where a meal of dumplings for 2 or noodles with meat is about 80p. But we've spent a lot of our time visiting art galleries and spending more than we should dining in fancy restaurants- it gets addictive! We had cocktails atop an old French building looking down the Bund and across to the crazy skyscrapers of Pudong on the other side of the the river (they turn the lights off gradually from 11pm so it's strange to watch it change). Our best meal in China was in a restaurant which you had to know a secret code to get into (it was all a bit Lord of the rings - get it wrong and the door on your right opens to reveal a brick wall, get it right and the door opens on the left to reveal the waitor ready to take you to your table).
Anyway, I'm typing this first thing in the morning waiting to leave in the rain to Japan. Hope everyone is good at home.
We've spent our last few days living 2 lives. We're staying in a youth hostel in the cheap end of town and have most of our meals down the market where a meal of dumplings for 2 or noodles with meat is about 80p. But we've spent a lot of our time visiting art galleries and spending more than we should dining in fancy restaurants- it gets addictive! We had cocktails atop an old French building looking down the Bund and across to the crazy skyscrapers of Pudong on the other side of the the river (they turn the lights off gradually from 11pm so it's strange to watch it change). Our best meal in China was in a restaurant which you had to know a secret code to get into (it was all a bit Lord of the rings - get it wrong and the door on your right opens to reveal a brick wall, get it right and the door opens on the left to reveal the waitor ready to take you to your table).
Anyway, I'm typing this first thing in the morning waiting to leave in the rain to Japan. Hope everyone is good at home.
Friday, 22 August 2008
Gumbai!
As the person in charge of an ancient temple full of ancient relics what would you do to make it more accessable to tourists?
Fairy lights!!
This is a commen Chinese solution: both the drum tower and the city walls of X'ian along with countless other Buddest, confucian and Taoist temples, are jauntily lit up at night.
And it does not stop there; we visited a lake in a bamboo forest where they filmed some of "crouching tiger hidden dragon" and were somewhat startled when some tightrope walkers started crossing a wire above us while 2unlimiteds "no limits" blasted out of hidden speakers. All of this is rather disconcerting especialy with the legions of Chinese tourists all hearded around by microphone weilding tour guides everywhere. There dont seem to be many
Westeners outside of Beijing but boy are you aware that there are 1.3 billion Chinese out there.
We spent 5 days in Beijing, and after the scrum and the forbidden palace and the summer palace (vistitor numbers for the previous day over 20,000), we gave up on the great wall and went to try to join the party and get olympic tickets- this was easyer than we thought: as long as China aren't represented, you could by a ticket at face value from a local who did not want to go.
We saw waterpolo (slighly more homoerotic than rugby in that the players grappling with each other are half naked) and the athletics. We had one ticket for the badmington but had not checked the scheduals and were'nt able to get a second as China were playing in the match after. Luckily a guy bought our ticket for 5 times what we paid for it which was enough to kit us out in fake Deasil, Ralf Lauren, Fred Perry and Prada down the market. Armed with our new smart clothes we were ready to go for dinner with Francis the diplomat. We had met Francis and his friend " the entreprenour" in a bar where the Entreprenaur took over the canto pop band to sing opera while Francis and his mistress taught us to dance. He invited us for dinner. We ate in a vast house filled with ornate furniture, uniformed waiting staff and vast quantities of excellent food. our companions were people who were introduced variously as Mr Wu- very important boss, Mr Lu- big boss ect; all rather cool if slightly nerve wracking at time. They and everyone else in China seem to think I look like Vladimere Putin.
The best thing about China has got to be the food. we've tried everything from kebabs (sheeps oseophagus tastes like squid), firey hot noodles in street side stalls and markets, to small restaurant's where you point as someone elses food and hope (Pigs ear not so nice but generaly we've done fairly well). We went to a fancy pants reataurant in Beijing (Peking duck inPeking)and had roast duck- the chef came to the table and carved it for us giving us the meat and crackling before chopping the head in half and serving that to us as a delicacy- we couldn't. since Beijing we've grown rather fond of dumplings- it all rather put Ping Pong to shame.
Anyway as China would only give us a 30 day visa we have had to change our plans. So instead of swooping down the coast to Hong Kong we are getting the ferry to Japan on Tuesday and continuing our overland journey so that by the 25th of September we will have travelled overland from London to Tokyo. The next entry will be to say Koneechi wa or however you spell it. hopefully will be able to put some photo's up as Shanghhi is not blessed with amazing internet access.
Fairy lights!!
This is a commen Chinese solution: both the drum tower and the city walls of X'ian along with countless other Buddest, confucian and Taoist temples, are jauntily lit up at night.
And it does not stop there; we visited a lake in a bamboo forest where they filmed some of "crouching tiger hidden dragon" and were somewhat startled when some tightrope walkers started crossing a wire above us while 2unlimiteds "no limits" blasted out of hidden speakers. All of this is rather disconcerting especialy with the legions of Chinese tourists all hearded around by microphone weilding tour guides everywhere. There dont seem to be many
Westeners outside of Beijing but boy are you aware that there are 1.3 billion Chinese out there.
We spent 5 days in Beijing, and after the scrum and the forbidden palace and the summer palace (vistitor numbers for the previous day over 20,000), we gave up on the great wall and went to try to join the party and get olympic tickets- this was easyer than we thought: as long as China aren't represented, you could by a ticket at face value from a local who did not want to go.
We saw waterpolo (slighly more homoerotic than rugby in that the players grappling with each other are half naked) and the athletics. We had one ticket for the badmington but had not checked the scheduals and were'nt able to get a second as China were playing in the match after. Luckily a guy bought our ticket for 5 times what we paid for it which was enough to kit us out in fake Deasil, Ralf Lauren, Fred Perry and Prada down the market. Armed with our new smart clothes we were ready to go for dinner with Francis the diplomat. We had met Francis and his friend " the entreprenour" in a bar where the Entreprenaur took over the canto pop band to sing opera while Francis and his mistress taught us to dance. He invited us for dinner. We ate in a vast house filled with ornate furniture, uniformed waiting staff and vast quantities of excellent food. our companions were people who were introduced variously as Mr Wu- very important boss, Mr Lu- big boss ect; all rather cool if slightly nerve wracking at time. They and everyone else in China seem to think I look like Vladimere Putin.
The best thing about China has got to be the food. we've tried everything from kebabs (sheeps oseophagus tastes like squid), firey hot noodles in street side stalls and markets, to small restaurant's where you point as someone elses food and hope (Pigs ear not so nice but generaly we've done fairly well). We went to a fancy pants reataurant in Beijing (Peking duck inPeking)and had roast duck- the chef came to the table and carved it for us giving us the meat and crackling before chopping the head in half and serving that to us as a delicacy- we couldn't. since Beijing we've grown rather fond of dumplings- it all rather put Ping Pong to shame.
Anyway as China would only give us a 30 day visa we have had to change our plans. So instead of swooping down the coast to Hong Kong we are getting the ferry to Japan on Tuesday and continuing our overland journey so that by the 25th of September we will have travelled overland from London to Tokyo. The next entry will be to say Koneechi wa or however you spell it. hopefully will be able to put some photo's up as Shanghhi is not blessed with amazing internet access.
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
New hair, new Roz
this is Roz with her brand spanking new haircut chosen from a Chinese magazine also in the shot is the prowd hairdresser (and also her son)
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
The middle Kingham
Hello from China!!
We crossed the border 2 days ago through the Torugat pass; a 4000m pass that links Kyrgyzstan and China. It's amazing what a difference a day makes! The road from Kyrgyzstan was a rutted track that wound through the mountains and as you entered China the road slowly became paved then lane markings appeared followed by street lighting; all a bit of a culture shock.
We had a great time in Central Asia and moving onto China means finaly leaving the old USSR. its weird but other than our brief dip into Turkey every country we visited was once part of the homogenous whole and yet they were all so completely and utterly different.
We've done so much in the last few weeks its impossible to sum it all up but here are a few things:
To save cash we stayed in a cheap hotel in Bishkek. It had no shower so we visited the Russian baths - it was only inside once we'd been sent to the separate girls and boys bits that we discovered it was a naked free-for- all. Everyone kept staring at me, it took a while to realise that as the only Westerner there I was packing more body hair in my left armpit than most of the men put together which caused a lot of interest, I was also a bit of a novel colour. ..
We've eaten so much dairy in Kyrgistan, most of it within earshot of the cow/horse/camel/sheep/yak that produced it. The weirdest thing had to be cows milk fermented in sheeps lung till it becomes cheese. The lung is then sliced and eaten (we only discovered what it was afterwards) it was as revolting as it sounds, I escaped with a nibble but Roz was sitting next to a granny who encouraged her to keep going.
We went back to Uzbekistan to get our China Visa. It was really cool to see it again although we were held up slightly at the border while I filled in customs forms and every member of the border post queued up to have a mobile phone shot taken with Roz. I had also forgotten the odd fashion amounst Uzbek women of shaving off their eyebrows and drawing on a thick monobrow instead- it makes them all look a bit like bond villens.
Back in Kyrgyzstan we walked to a lake near the border and spent the night with some shephards. Their children were fascinated by our cameras and spent ages taking photos of each other till the batteries ran out. The parents were more interested in how Backpacks worked and wanted to try them on. They had a herd of Yaks and horses. Roz got to milk a Yak. I tried to milk a horse but it kept walking off as soon as I got the bucket under it much to the meriment of the locals (you milk a horse 5 times a day)
anyway all is cool here and the food is so much better- in Central Asia fatty meat is more expensive than lean meat and we had lots of meals in restaurantrs and peoples houses where the proprietor/ host would present us with a plate of fried fat and beam at us as we tried to stuff soem of it down for politenesses sake.
more email options here so should be able to put more photos etc up and get round to bringing the map up to date.
We crossed the border 2 days ago through the Torugat pass; a 4000m pass that links Kyrgyzstan and China. It's amazing what a difference a day makes! The road from Kyrgyzstan was a rutted track that wound through the mountains and as you entered China the road slowly became paved then lane markings appeared followed by street lighting; all a bit of a culture shock.
We had a great time in Central Asia and moving onto China means finaly leaving the old USSR. its weird but other than our brief dip into Turkey every country we visited was once part of the homogenous whole and yet they were all so completely and utterly different.
We've done so much in the last few weeks its impossible to sum it all up but here are a few things:
To save cash we stayed in a cheap hotel in Bishkek. It had no shower so we visited the Russian baths - it was only inside once we'd been sent to the separate girls and boys bits that we discovered it was a naked free-for- all. Everyone kept staring at me, it took a while to realise that as the only Westerner there I was packing more body hair in my left armpit than most of the men put together which caused a lot of interest, I was also a bit of a novel colour. ..
We've eaten so much dairy in Kyrgistan, most of it within earshot of the cow/horse/camel/sheep/yak that produced it. The weirdest thing had to be cows milk fermented in sheeps lung till it becomes cheese. The lung is then sliced and eaten (we only discovered what it was afterwards) it was as revolting as it sounds, I escaped with a nibble but Roz was sitting next to a granny who encouraged her to keep going.
We went back to Uzbekistan to get our China Visa. It was really cool to see it again although we were held up slightly at the border while I filled in customs forms and every member of the border post queued up to have a mobile phone shot taken with Roz. I had also forgotten the odd fashion amounst Uzbek women of shaving off their eyebrows and drawing on a thick monobrow instead- it makes them all look a bit like bond villens.
Back in Kyrgyzstan we walked to a lake near the border and spent the night with some shephards. Their children were fascinated by our cameras and spent ages taking photos of each other till the batteries ran out. The parents were more interested in how Backpacks worked and wanted to try them on. They had a herd of Yaks and horses. Roz got to milk a Yak. I tried to milk a horse but it kept walking off as soon as I got the bucket under it much to the meriment of the locals (you milk a horse 5 times a day)
anyway all is cool here and the food is so much better- in Central Asia fatty meat is more expensive than lean meat and we had lots of meals in restaurantrs and peoples houses where the proprietor/ host would present us with a plate of fried fat and beam at us as we tried to stuff soem of it down for politenesses sake.
more email options here so should be able to put more photos etc up and get round to bringing the map up to date.
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