Lost on Planet China!!

Chaos!

12th January 2010

Today we headed to Guangzhou from Hong Kong, a handy 2 hour journey ...that part of the journey was fine!. We arrived in China and went through immigration, it took me a little bit longer due to my differing appearence (had no beard when I got my passport picture taken so had to play a bit of spot the difference)...After immigration we went through the various scanners and we were into China. That was the easy part. 

We went down to a kiosk with 'Tourist Information', that was about as much use as a hole in the head, they wouldn't tell us the name of the bus station to get a bus to Yuangshou, all 

they were interested in was selling us tickets that were over double what we eventually paid for them....but that again wasn't the hard part.We figured out we had to go to the main train station, we had fuck all help from the English speaking Chinese as they were trying to solicit some business and generally lurked around the stations in search of lost foreingers. I only saw 2 more foreigners over the course of the day. We got on the subway to the main station, obviously not a done thing by many foreigners as they were fasinated by me, I even caught some taking a sly picture with their phones...I can see the headlines tomorrow...'Werewolf spotted on China Subway'.

We arrived at the main station and our day was about to take a dump when we went for exit A, crowds of people everywhere it was chaos, I have to say the Chinese people are very helpful but they can't speak much English so it was very difficult, we talked to the police and they had a few words but were very forthcoming and didn't mind helping, soon a crowd of people were around us pointing different directions. We decided to go to the station and "queued" to get in, the word queue doesn't exist in the Asian language as I've learnt..When we were in the queue some guy told us the trains were all full and we could only get bus but wasn't very forthcoming with the information on where the buses are, we followed him * BIG MISTAKE *.He told us the bus was about to leave and we had to run, so we were rushing for god knows what reason through stations and across roads and jumped into a tuktuk when we arrived at this dinky little travel agent down a laneway. They tell us the price is another $10, we just walked away, then they called us back and said OK but we weren't paying until we saw the bus first. This guy tells us to follow him, we went up roads, across roads, back accross roads, down side roads for about half an hour, looking back we should have walked away but we werre desperate. We finally arrived and there's no bus there and 2 others in the yard with heads under the bonnet fixing them. I got seriously pissed off and told him to forget about it, the guy didn't have a word of English and put me onto someone on his phone that spoke it, at this stage it was all too suspicious anyway so we shook him off in a shopping centre and then snook into a tuktuk 10 minutes later to get out of there.

The tuktuk took us abit past the main station and I refused to pay him the full amount, well Tina said not to. He just went on his way. We had to get another subway back to the mainstation then we studied the exit plan and realised we had to go through D4, we arrive at D4 and it's closed, lovely, I work it out we can go through another exit, as were walking down the other tunnel the guy who approcahed us earlier was lurking about and asked what happened, I said 'too dodgy' and he looked pissed off but there was nothing he could do, at this stage Tina was ready to throw the towel in, Me being the optomist said lets just see whats at the end here...Exit F...Guandong Bus Station...There was a foreigner counter where we went up to, they told us there was a bus at 20:30 and it was nearly half of what the dodgies were looking for, we sat down and laughed about the last 6 hours...probably the longest of the trip so far.

The bus arrived and it wasn't a sleeper, but we already knew that but it did have big armchairs and lots of leg room. The bus was flooring it and it set off every speedcamera on it's travels. We were the only foreigners on the bus and we seemed to be somehwat of a novelty. The journey was supposed to take 13 hours, about 5 hours in we hear "Yangshou" shouted, we were fast asleep and Tina was worried this was the wrong place, we happened to write the name of a street in our notebook in English & Chinese earlier so we showed it to the driver and some passers by and they said we were here..So 01:30am and nowhere booked and 5 hours ahead of schedule, we walked down towards this street and 

found one place that was full, there was a few others that had people asleep, this one guy called me into his when he saw us. Tina went up and inspected the oom and everything was good including the price.

So far China seems very developed, including stellar motorways and transport..Lets hope things will get better. BTW, it's fucking freezing.

Hong Kong, China Visa, Michelin Star...and China Bound

Hongkong

11th January 2011

Today we arrived at the visa office to collect the passports, 30 day China visa no problem! In and out in 10 minutes. We headed for some more of that delicious wontoon soup and again to the uber delicious bakery for some out of this world cakes. We headed to Victoria park, an average enough park with more rules then a secondary school but a nice place in the middle of a concete jungle. We headed to Hong Kom to book our tickets to Guanghzou, China tomorrow.We walked abit around the concrete jungle and contemplated going to the  'top' attraction - Noahs Ark to scale..I thought it sounded uber shit, so we left it. The lads we met late actually did this that day and said it was the shitest thing ever!

Tonight we headed to the worlds cheapest Michelin star restaurant in the world, Tim Ho Wan restaurant..we waited about an hour to get inside. Myself Tina, Dominic and Tom ate a variety of food for the grand sum of 4euro each and that included a bottomless cup of Tea! The prok buns (It's signature dish) were to excellent.

We walked through the ladies market and through the hussle and bussle there was this little man offering 'copy watch', I was after an Omega or Tag and as they were pretty scarce on the ground we went with him up this narrow and up a set of steps into an appartment complex where we were handed a catalogue..I choose an Omega and he disappeared a few minutes later another guy emerges and says they have none, I ask do they have any and he walks away?? They must have thought we were the feds or something!

We wandered around the market and laughed at their hardball bargaining on things, they'll just blank you if they don't get what their after. We headed to 7-11 and had the cheapest beer in Hong Kong at a table in the rear of the shop! Not unusual as there was a couple of locals there enjoying the same before we arrived.

One thing I noticed they are the biggest germaphobes ever here, every escalator, lift, phonebox had signs saying that their sterilised daily/hourly...the extreme was when we were in the queue for the lift and the security guard ran for his life when some foreigner sneezed!

Tomorrow China bound...can't wait!

Hong Kong

We headed to the Chinese Visa Office this morning, not too many in the queue there so we were in and out within the hour, the office is very well organised.

Afterwards we headed to this little Asian 'fastfood' joint that served wontoon soup where the locals were eating pizza and spaghetti :) .We also found this unbelievable bakery that made this oreo with cookies and cream cake...yum! From there we headed to Central and walked to the worlds longest escalator walkway that went to nowhere! Still interesting to see. We got the "free" bus down the hill, well we had to pay but Tina seemed to think it was free for some reason and headed to the avenue of stars in the harbour, pretty shit but the view of the island is great, well it was abit misty today but still nice.

We headed to the Peak this evening with the 2 lads, got the bus from central up to the peak, there was a big queue for the tram which for some reason we all thought went up further, when we got to the tram we realised it went down hill! Pretty shocking alright we all agreed but at least we got a few moments at the top to enjoy the Peak.


Went for a meal in the central area of the island and fund this little spot off the main street, pretty decent grub but try and split a bill that's in Chinese with 2 strangers! It's good fun!

Headed for a beer and headed back to the slums as we need to collect the passports from the visa office in the morning....and it's feckin freezing here folks!

Hong Kong...What a city!

A shoppers paradise that houses a population of 6,500 people per sq km! But my first impressions of this country have been good, we were looking for the bus in the airport and some people stopped and helped us find our way, however when it comes to queues and entering the train it's a different story and don't expect service with a smile to be the norm! I do however think this is a city with charm, move away from the TST tourist trap areas and play spot the westerner!

First of all, get an Octopus pass, this is a handy swipe card that can be used on buses, trains, 7-11 maccers and more it's very handy. The public transport is exceptional, 4 minutes for a subway train in the CBD any time of the day and always on time, the city itself is immaculate as well with little or no rubbish on the ground.

Today we headed to Sham Sui Po and had a wander around the market and the Golden Computer Arcade this place is jammers and has hundreds of shops, but unfortunately didn't stock the part I was looking for, but an interesting enough experience none the less. I decided a while back that I would get a DSLR Camera here when we saw the quality of the images someone we travelled with took so done my research today and was surprised to see the amount of scams regarding electrical gear in HK, I heeded the advice of someone, and stuck to one of the chain shops: Broadway, it may be a little bit more expensive but you get what you pay for, I knew what I wanted (Canon 550D with 2 lens) so I headed in and was show the kit, asked for a deal and I got a bunch of throwins: Spare Battery, Bag, Screen Protector, Lens Protector, Large Tripod, Card Reader, 8GB SDHC Card, Lens Blower, Lens Wipe and a 'Hello Kitty' compact camera case :) I was happy with the purchase and the quality of the images I took later on.

Met the 2 lads for a Guinness in the Irish Pub (Shocking I know!!!) and headed to the light show on the dock, I didn't get any good snaps as we only caught the end of it...it is nothing special BUT it is what it is and worth seeing in my opinion. We headed across to the island and went on the hunt for some grub we found a nice spot apparently 'one of the best' in Hong Kong and it wasn't a bad spot either...loving the Tsang Tao anyway! Had a 'social' beer outside the 7-11 and headed back to the Slumking, sorry Chungking Mansions.

Tomorrow morning we head to the Chinese Visa Office.

Bangkok to Hong Kong

We got our yellow fever fever jabs and our influenza jabs yesterday in the Thai Red Cross, A1 service as per any facility we've used in Thailand and excellent service, my arm is killing today..but that's the least of our worries! We hailed a taxi and asked him to bring us to the Skytrain station, he unfortunately took us to the wrong station (I showed him the name in writing! grrr). So we had to get a subway train, a skytrain and a further skytrain after that to get to the airport! Disaster as this delayed us over an hour, we thought we'd have more then enough time but alas the checkin girl was as slow as the M50 and immigration was no better! We were actually the last one's on the plane only catching the plane by a whisker!

A short plane journey later we were in HK and through the futuristic airport we met an Aussie guy and an English guy who we travelled with to our accommodation, the bus driver was one of the angriest men I'd met in a long time and I told the lads I ain't going up next time! He was aright at the end of the journey so we'll let him away with it! We arrived at the Chungking Mansions, which is somewhat of a notorious place in Hong Kong, I didn't know what to make of the place, it could be described as 'Little Africa' or more accurately something out of Robocop (Detroit City Ghetto) or Blade, it's insane..our guesthouse is A1 though our other comrades weren't as lucky. We've a flat screen, fridge and a really clean room but at the premium of 30euro but thats cheap for our base in Hong Kong. We just had time to drop the bags in the room and met the lads for a well deserved Guinness in Murphy's pub next door, delicious pint and at nearly 7 Euro a pop it would want to be!

Blogger to Email test

Testing the email functionality of blogger so I can circumvent 'The Great Firewall of China'

Bangkok to Chiang Mai

A lazy day today, yesterday was very intense so we relaxed and awaited the arrival of our 'VIP' bus or 'Very Indeed Poo' as I'd like to call it. Not a complete disaster as we had to seats eat to ourselves so managed to sleep for once! We arrived at 5:30am well ahead of schedule, everybody was 'full' or couldn't be bothered to take us in at that hour, but we found somewhere in the end and got some precious shuteye!

Tomorrow or today for that matter we have to get some yellow fever jabs for South America....fun!