Blog Updates

Apologies for the delays in updating the blog recently. As most of you are probably aware, we’ve now reached Australia and have been taking it easy, catching up with friends and basically enjoying doing nothing. But stay tuned....we still have a few more entries to post.

From China to South Korea

We had heard that it was possible to get a Ferry from China to Korea. We were keen to do as much of our trip as possible without flying but doing so proved more difficult than expected.

For starters the ferry company website was only in Chinese and Korean and none of the travel agents we found seemed to be able to help us. Our guidebook was of very limited help but we eventually found an office that sells tickets – only to be told that they couldn’t sell them to US because we weren’t Chinese, Japanese or Korean (they couldn’t be sure if we would be allowed into Korea). So we would have to go to the port to buy them before we leave. This was cutting things a bit close, because there are only 2 ferry sailings a week and if we missed the Sunday one, then the next one would be Thursday which would be too late for us to catch our flight to Sydney. The ferry port is actually in a town called Tanggu, about 200km from Beijing.

Nevertheless, we set off on Saturday evening, taking the train to a place called Tianjin. That was pretty cool because this is apparently the fastest intercity train in the world and travels at 330 km/h. We covered the 120km trip to Tianjin in just 30 minutes – less time than it took us to get from our Beijing Hostel to the train station. In fact, we were very impressed with how modern the train station and train was – it was by far the most modern we’ve seen, the station was more like an airport. Who said travelling in China was difficult?

We spent the night in Tianjin which turned out to be a very nice city. It was immediately clear that this place doesn’t get any tourists because (1) our guidebook had very little to say about it (2) nobody speaks ANY English (3) we foreigners were a bit of a novelty and had to pose for a number of camera-phone photos. All this was surprising as we later learned that it’s the 6th largest city in China with 11 million people!

Next morning, we were up early to get a bus to Tanggu port. Again, from the one single paragraph that our guidebook gave to this town, we were expecting something along the lines of Rosslare Harbour in Ireland, so were very surprised again to see another sprawling metropolis with skyscrapers and massive apartment blocks as far as the eye could see! Just another example of the sheer scale of China!

Thankfully, we were able to buy tickets there at the port but getting onto the boat proved to be another ordeal. For a start, it didn’t help that the name on Conor’s boarding pass was “Conor Eireannach Irish” (Tanggu port officials are obviously not familiar with the layout of Irish passports). Also, the fact that Conor’s hair now looks significantly different from his passport photo prompted suspicious staring and further questions from the immigration official. We were both pulled aside while some senior official scrutinized our passports and checked against his list, however, in the end we were both allowed onto the ferry.....horray :)

The sailing itself was largely uneventful. There were no other westerners on the boat....we were the only ones. The food was all unusual looking stuff and since everything was written in Korean and no one had any English, we didn’t really know what we were eating. The sight of a young child peeing into a paper cup at the dinner table was a little off putting (but apparently it’s normal here as no one else noticed)!

After 28 hours on the boat, we finally arrived in South Korea. We will spend 5 days around the capital Seoul before flying to Australia on Friday. Our initial thoughts are one of surprise about the technology here: This is a modern developed country but it’s the first country in all the places we’ve been where our phones don’t work and the ATMs don’t offer instructions in English.

A week in Mainland China

Our short time in China started with a 24 hour train journey from Hong Kong to Beijing (we had thought about spending that time watching a full series of 24, but then decided against it). Considering that we had completely under-researched this section of the trip, everything went much easier than expected. On the train we had a 4 bed cabin all to ourselves and the journey was very smooth. Covering 2,000km in just one day in such comfort is a stark contrast from the bumpy bus journeys with frequent stops that we had become accustomed to in South East Asia and the change was very welcome. And not only that, when we got to Beijing, we finally had a chance to tell the immigration officials what we think of them......yes, after they stamp your passport, you are given a keypad in which you press a button to indicate if their service was Very Satisfactory / Satisfactory / Unsatisfactory / Very Unsatisfactory. Didn’t have the balls to press Very Unsatisfactory just in case they pulled our passports back! All in all, rather painless going from Hong Kong to Beijing.

Arriving in Beijing provides a good lesson in feeling very, very small. The population is about 16 million but looking beyond population numbers, the buildings and streets and open areas are just enormous! The train station we walked out of was massive and the 10-lane dual carriageway in front of us was just a typical street forming the blocks of the city. However, despite its scale it struck us as a very clean, organised and orderly place....suppose this is what Communist HQ should look like! We stayed in a quieter backstreet area of the city that had real character – recommended to us by Conor’s friend John Pender who had visited here recently and it was really nice (thanks John!) One thing we’ve noticed from travelling to larger cities is that there are so many locals, the tourists tend to get “diluted” and so there are fewer people trying to sell you stuff or offer taxi/accommodation etc. However, both of us being taller and fairer than the average Chinese person, we did get plenty of stares.....it sure is a funny feeling walking into a restaurant and having eye contact with everyone that you look to.

In Beijing city, we visited the main touristy areas....Tiananmen Square, the world’s largest public square (can hold up to a million people) and the scene of a government assault on pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989: the government sent tanks in and opened fire on the crowd, killing a load of people. Today, security is tight around the square and you need to pass bags through an x-ray before you can get access. We also checked out the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace where the Emperors used to live. The Forbidden City is so called because it was off limits for 500 years – the price of uninvited admission was instant execution (a bit like Tiananmen square)! The Summer Palace was their summer retreat. One Empress expanded the Palace using money earmarked for the Navy. To satisfy the navy, she built a large ship made of marble to decorate the lake. We guess they weren’t so happy about that. The hill at the Palace offered some very nice views of the city.

However, our main reason for visiting Beijing (and China in fact) was to see the Great Wall of China, and indeed it was Great! We spent a day walking 8km along a stretch of the wall (from Jinshanling to Simatai). Being a bit further from Beijing than other sections of the wall, and being a bit dilapidated in places (i.e. a bit more natural and less reconstructed than some other sections) meant that the wall we visited was not overrun with tourists and we got to see it in a purer form. The walk was quite steep in places and also a bit dangerous as sections of the wall had crumbled away, but we got some fantastic views along the way and it was indeed a Great Walk of China (ha ha ha).

One Country, Two Systems

Our flight from Hanoi to Hong Kong brought us through Bangkok again, thanks to the great prices of (Ryan)Air Asia. For some reason, Kadi needed to get a Visa on arrival in Thailand (Conor didn’t) but it just seemed to be an exercise in stamping passports because the Visa stamp itself was free and she was automatically entitled to it – so basically, Kadi needed to get a visa stamp before getting a normal entry stamp, whereas Conor just needed an entry stamp. The mysteries of international travel permissions will never cease to amaze us! It was great to be back in Thailand (even briefly) just for the food :) Anyway, onward into Hong Kong without any problems.

So what is the deal with Hong Kong? Well, as it says on the title above, it’s basically part of China once again (since 1997, after about 100 years under the reign of Britain), but under the terms of the handover, it is continuing with the free market system that existed prior to 1997, rather than switching to communism like the rest of China. This “one country, two systems” approach will remain in place for 50 years and we don’t know what’s going to happen after that.

The city itself is fantastically modern, clean and efficient. That’s quite an achievement in this part of the globe we can tell you - and it was a very welcome change! Geographically, the city doesn’t actually take up much space so it’s fairly easy to get around and see it all, but does house 8.5 million people, so this means that it’s fairly densely populated and full of high-rise buildings and skyscrapers. With so many people living in such a small space, you can imagine that property gets fairly expensive and there are reportedly tens of thousands of people living in little make-shift huts on the roofs of buildings across the city. The high property prices also had an impact on our accommodation and we ended up staying in a Getto called “Chungking Mansions”. Despite its plush name, this was the only dilapidated building we saw amongst all the glitz, glamour and neon. On the outside, it looked pretty dodgy but our room was fine and served us well during our 5 nights in Hong Kong (although it was very very small)!

Although it’s a very safe city, we did narrowly avoid a bit of excitement! After strolling a shopping area one day, we went home and noticed on the local tv news that there had been an incident of someone throwing acid on people, right in the area that we were in and at the time that we were leaving. Luckily, we didn’t see any of it.

We basically spent our time checking out the sights, doing some shopping and just enjoying being in civilisation again! During our time there, we had the opportunity to ride what is allegedly the longest escalator in the world. It is an outdoor escalator which takes 20 minutes to get from the bottom to the top - but it's kinda cheating since it's actually a series of separate escalators. One of the more interesting spectacles was the nightly lightshow: Every night at 8pm, the skyscrapers light up with moving neon lights and lasers, all coordinated to music. The show lasts 15 minutes and it was so good, we watched it nearly every night. It really has to be seen to be believed.

And what do Hong Kongians do on Sunday afternoons? Well, we were very surprised to find them having picnics all over the city in the most unusual urban places – in car parks, on pedestrian walkways over main roads, even on the common area under skyscrapers. They simply throw a sheet down on the concrete (yes concrete), sit down, and have a bowl of noodles and tea while playing cards, knitting, or surfing the internet on their notebooks using the public wifi. Very strange sight!

Thankfully (as hoped) we had no problems getting our China visa from Hong Kong. So after our time there, we got our train ticket to Beijing (a 24 hour journey) and off we went!

Postcard Competition – Winners!

The American countries that we visited during the first 3 months of our trip were: USA, Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica, Peru, Brazil and Argentina. And the winners are:

Fearghal King
Barney Henry

Congratulations guys. Postcards on their way to you!

Farewell South East Asia

We are now leaving Vietnam and South East Asia and heading to China. We had intended to spend just 2-3 weeks in Vietnam but everywhere we went, we really enjoyed it and ended up staying longer than planned, and now, almost 4 weeks later we must leave as we have to hurry up to South Korea to catch our flight to Australia.

This means we must severely limit our journey through China to just a couple of destinations: Hong Kong and Beijing.

Our original plan to get to Hong Kong was to go overland on the train from Hanoi, but it turned out to be very difficult to get the China visa from Hanoi, so we have decided to fly to Hong Kong instead – we don’t need a visa for Hong Kong and it is apparently (hopefully!) easier to get a China visa there. We are looking forward to flying again after all the busses and trains recently.

North Vietnam: Hanoi, Sapa and Halong Bay

We’ve spent the last week or so checking out what North Vietnam has to offer. A lot, it turns out. Therefore we have like a million photos. Very tough to pick the best ones so we have a lot in this blog entry!

Hanoi

Hanoi was just another busy big Vietnamese city and not particularly noteworthy, in our opinion, although we did enjoy it there. One of the more interesting attractions was the preserved body of Ho Chi Minh (Uncle Ho), a past Prime Minister and communist revolutionary who died 40 years ago tomorrow (2 September 1969). Although he requested to be cremated after his death, his body was instead put on public display inside a large elaborate Mausoleum where it still remains today, and every day thousands of people flock to see him. We were very surprised at the large number of Vietnamese coming to pay their respects. One woman was even crying as she walked through. The tour also brings you around to the old house where he used to (apparently) live. It shows some very basic and simple furnishings and tries to convey the minimal non-materialistic life he led.....but we don’t buy it....it looks like communist propaganda to us!

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of dead Vietnamese people, we recently learned of an unusual belief that they have: Every month, some Vietnamese burn some fresh crisp bank notes – the theory is that they are sending the money to their dead relatives so they can buy some food (or beer or wine!) in the afterlife!

Sapa

After Hanoi, we took an overnight train (our first) up to the mountainous countryside of Sapa. The train journey itself was an experience, or rather the company in our 4-bed cabin was. We arrived to find a few Vietnamese people sitting on our beds. They stood up to let us in, but when we sat down, they shoved us over and sat down beside us (on our beds)! They settled in quite comfortably in fact – even putting their feet up on the sheets. We didn’t know what to make of them but they did eventually get up and go to sleep on their beds. Although the next morning, the older guy (who was getting off at an earlier stop) came back down, pushed Conor’s legs out of the way and sat back down again (although Conor was asleep at the time). When the guy finally left, he helpfully left the door open and the lights on....this was at about 4.30am. We had heard that people in South East Asia don’t have the awareness of people’s personal space, although this was the first time we experienced it so can’t complain.

The climate in Sapa was a lot cooler and less humid than we’ve had recently so it was a very pleasant change. All the restaurants and hotel rooms have fire places and we even managed to have a cosy fire one night (and some wine).The town reminded us of the Livigno ski resort in the Alps....this must be how they look during the summer without snow.

The real beauty of Sapa lies in the fantastic scenery, in particular the terraced paddy-fields on the various hills. We rented a motorbike and spent a few days just cruising around and taking it all in. It was a bit difficult at times because the road was non-existent in some places (like with streams going across the road, or the surface just collapsed away). It was definitely one of the most scenic places we’ve visited on our whole trip so far. They say a picture paints a thousand words so here are a few thousand words that will describe it better than we can:

The town, and surrounding countryside, is full of people from local hill-tribes. There are a number of different tribes and they all speak their own languages (and English). They wear traditional dress and try to sell their hand crafts. One tribe has a weird sense of fashion, wearing a ponytail on their forehead, and fix it in place with a random comb. They were interesting in how they lived but much of what they did, appeared to be for the tourists.

Oh yeah, and for those keeping track of the various foodstuffs that we’ve encountered, one of the less pleasant sights in Sapa was the dog meat available in the local market.

Halong Bay
We finished off our tour of North Vietnam with a short trip to Halong Bay. It’s a large bay with thousands of limestone mountains/islands jutting out of the water in unusual jagged and rounded shapes. We spent two days and one night sailing around the bay on a very nice boat with a fun group of Germans – yes they do exist – and one English guy. The tour included some kayaking around the bay and into some tight hidden caves. When we kayaked out the other end of one of the caves, we found ourselves inside a lagoon that was surrounded, all 360 degrees, by rocky mountain. But we couldn’t stay long because the tide was rising and our tiny exit was closing! We also explored (by foot) the local “Amazing Cave”. It was very large, possibly the biggest cave we’ve ever been in, and it lived up to its name being actually pretty amazing. And of course there was some craziness of jumping off the top floor of the boat into the water. It was quite hazy during our time there so our pictures don’t really do it justice.